Marrying the Mafia
Director: Jeong Heung-son
Year: 2002
Rating: 7.0
Country: Korea
AKA - Married
to the Mafia
This is another Korean romantic comedy
and it hits all the right notes being funny from beginning to a wonderful
ending. Relentlessly amusing with just the right amount of inevitable romance.
In 2001 My Sassy Girl came out to great acclaim and huge popularity and it
created an insatiable appetite for films in this genre. Many of them rather
flimsy or just plain silly, others quite wonderful. Generally, they are of
the mismatched variety that works its way through the phases of love until
they arrive at a happy ending. Always rather innocent, lots of smacking faces
and drunk scenes. This one would definitely fall into that category. It felt
like a sparkling gin fizz.
Dae-so (Jeong Hun-ho) and Jin-kyeong (Jeong-eun
Kim) wake up naked in bed next to each other and have no idea how this happened
as they have no clue who the other person is (at the end we find out how
this came about). This leads to great embarrassment on both their parts but
much less so than later in the day when Dae-so is hanging by his feet from
a very high building. It turns out Jin-kyeong has three older brothers -
she is the princess of the family and he is asked not so nicely to marry
her. He is understandingly reluctant - but then they squeeze him a little
harder - they are part of a top gangster clan run by their legendary father.
Oh shit, he thinks.
This reminds me of a small story in my
own life. Very small. Back when I was in my 20's and still able to get girls
to go out with me, I went to work in a new department in the bank. There
was a very attractive girl working there with the name of S.B. - very wasp
name that I won't reveal. A couple times we bumped up against each other
in our work life and chatted nicely. Found out she was single and thought
why not ask her out. This was way before rules to forbid employee fraternization
were put in place. I mentioned this to my friend Al, a slick ladies man who
did very well - he gives me a raised eye and then followed by a gulp. Are
you sure you want to do that? Ya, I guess so. Why? B. isn't her real name.
Her last name is G. - a very well known Mafia family that was in the news
quite a bit and not for charity work. Needless to say, I went looking for
love elsewhere.
So they are both reluctant but the three
brothers who for all of their toughness and beating down people are softies
when it comes to their sister and behind the scenes act as cupids to bring
these two sweet kids together. There is also a competing gang that intrudes
and some big bang ups. All in their own way quite funny. It turned out to
be the biggest hit in Korea that year and led to Marrying the Mafia II, though
as far as I can tell not really related to this one. Which is a shame because
Jeong-eun Kim is downright wonderful. Not really beautiful with tiny black
coal eyes that look like cartoon dots, but she manages to be adorable.
