Spy Girl
Director: Park Han-jun
Year: 2004
Rating: 4.0
Country: Korea
I hate being cruel
to a film that tries so hard to be as cute as a teddy bear in a Christmas
stocking left on your doorstep, but this Korean romantic comedy is as stultifying
as a philosophical treatise on Nietzsche as a pimpled faced teenager. It
has very little romance and the laughs are as hard to find as a real diamond
ring in a box of crackerjacks. So in other words, it is like a lot of other
Korean comedies of the period that were spewing out similar cloying films
like a drunk on a soju spree. Clichés and corny moments add up like
scum around your tub. But like I said I don't want to be cruel to the film.
I have had a bunch of Korean comedies sitting around for ages waiting to
be seen, pouting like Korean girls do in films and calling me "yeobo" (honey)
asking me to watch them. So why not I thought. Ok, not off to a great start
but it will get better I am sure.
The one plus and why I kept watching was
actress Kim Jung-hwa who has quite the lovely full-lipped face and dewy eyes
and went on after this to do mainly TV. She doesn't show a lot of acting
skills here besides a few changes of expression - tough girl, surprised girl,
confused girl, sad girl - and she looks great in all of them. Her romantic
co-star is Gong Yoo who could not be duller here if you paid him - like a
plate of left over mash potatoes - each word he speaks is like pulling teeth
- but he has gone on to some fame as the father in Train to Busan.
A new girl or "Angel" as she is termed
has begun working at Burger King. Definitely tastier than their kimchi burger.
The boys from the neighboring school flock to be around Hyo-jin in particular
Ko-bong who begins stalking her like a junior pervert and taking photos and
putting them up on a website run by his two nerdy friends. This creates a
problem for Hyo-jin because she is in fact not Hyo-jin but a spy from North
Korea on assignment and the North Korean authorities don't particularly like
their agents pictures on the Internet. She is staying with a family of North
Korean spies who are bored with the whole thing and have dinners in restaurants
with other Korean spies all complaining about their lives.
Hyo-jin is after a North Korean spy who
has gone astray and is ordered to bring him back or kill him. In the meantime
she has to date Ko-bong to convince him to delete the photos. Inexplicably
as he is such a wet towel, she begins to have some affection for him. I guess
men in North Korea really suck with all their adulation for the Great Leader.
In all of this she takes the time to beat up some bullies with her killer
training - but she is as tough in reality as that teddy bear left on the
doorstep. The one thing I will give the film is that the end wasn't what
I was expecting. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of films about spying
between the two nations - in periods when they are getting along the films
tend to be relatively kind to the North Koreans with comedies and at other
times the North Koreans are portrayed as monsters such as in Shiri.
