Okay! Madam
Director: Lee Cheol-ha
Year: 2020
Rating: 7.0
Country:
Korea
This Korean action comedy is as silly as a giant
bag of jellybeans but effortlessly makes you care about all the characters.
Of which there are many. The director Lee Cheol-ha could have gone in a number
of directions with this film - making it a serious Die Hard on a plane or
turning on the melodrama as Korean films often do or making it much too nasty
- but he does it just right. Lots of amusing nonsense, some solid action
scenes but mainly a film about family and the love within. The main actress
is Uhm Jung-hwa who is nicknamed the Korean Madonna for her successful cross-entertainment
career in music, fashion and acting. I remember her from Princess Aurora
where she plays a mother who is out to kill anyone who was involved with
her child's death. She is as tough here and as devoted to her daughter -
but stops short of killing everyone.
There is an opening scene in which a top
secret mission is taking place to steal something - and the female agent
gets a call that she can't trust anyone and needs to get out. She shoots
her fellow agent and is gone. It isn't until much later where we find out
what that was all about. The film shifts to Mi Young, a baker of popular
twisties that she sells in her small close-knit community. Her nerdy husband
is a computer repairman and they have an adorable daughter who is taking
ballet and has beaten up a boy for calling her a sumo wrestler in a tutu.
A sweet little family that struggles to get by financially. On a bottle cap,
they win a trip to Hawaii and the little girl has a smile as large as the
Nile. What could go wrong. On the plane on the way.
Turns out Mi Young isn't exactly who we
thought she was. Far from it. She is an ex-North Korean agent who deserted,
changed her appearance and took on a different identity and name. But somehow
the North Koreans have learned that she will be on the plane and hijack it
to bring her back to the north. There are about a dozen of them. And the
fun begins. We get our first hint when she comes out of the bathroom and
one of the agents tries to grab her - her instincts come back quickly because
she was not only a North Korean agent, she was a legend.
But remember, this is a comedy and much
of that comes from the other passengers and staff that the film spends time
with, her daughter realizing it is her mom beating the shit out of these
guys, her husband who has a few surprises as well - and then back to the
fights. A very light but sure touch to get the balance right. If this ever
gets re-made in America, Melissa McCarthy will star in it. Or Sandra Bullock.
One of the passengers is a Korean action actress who the daughter asks to
help her mother - she replies, the only thing you see of me in the movie
is my face, the rest is being done by other people. An inside joke, I think.
Jung-hwa was fifty years old at the time and I would guess was being doubled
most of the time in the action sequences.
