Fabricated City
Director: Park Kwang-hyun
Year: 2017
Rating: 7.5
Country: Korea
This is a wild,
hyperkinetic and improbable ride. It is The Fugitive combined with Mission
Impossible if Richard Kimble had been brutalized and raped in prison and
then tracks down the person who framed him with the help of a female cyber
genius. And the person who framed him is an evil nefarious bastard who could
be a villain in a super-hero movie. It never slows down and gets more and
more absurd and ridiculous as it goes along but you just have to tell yourself
- sure why not - sure he is suddenly a whiz driving a car - sure he can beat
up a group of gangsters - sure he can escape prison after a car has rolled
over ten times - sure he can set up this intricate outlandish plan in about
the time it takes me to get to my kitchen from my living room. Why not? This
is a lot of fun once the prison segment is over with - but suspend all your
belief in reality before entering.
It begins with a huge action scene in which
a group of military specialists drop from an airplane and take on a horde
of killers - displaying John Woo theatrics to mow them down. And then the
hero gets killed. Game over. Oh wait, it is just a video game. And if you
think about it, much of the film plays out like one as well. Kwon (Ji Chang-Wook)
is part of a group of gamers who take it all very seriously and whose identities
are kept behind the keyboard. He is kind of a young slacker with no ambitions
who once was on the National Taekwondo team but gave it up - this will come
in handy. He answers a phone that has been left behind in the video game
hall and is promised $300 if he brings it to an apartment - he does so, collects
the money but sees no one and leaves. And then all shit breaks loose - and
falls down on him - he is arrested by the cops at home with a ton of
evidence on him for raping and killing a young girl. After this film and
Miss Conspirator I think it best if you don't go to the apartments of strangers.
In prison the guards beat him and the head convict (Kim Sang-ho) takes
a disliking to him and enter the two rapists (implied but not seen). It isn't
pleasant. But this sets up the next stage. Revenge.
He breaks out and meets up with one of
his game players - Mr. Hairy - who turns out to be this young cute girl (Shim
Eun-kyung) who turns out to be a master hacker who prefers talking to people
on the phone even if they are next to her and who turns out to be a master
perv pretender when needed. An all-around girl. The other nerd gamers all
join up with their special technical skills and go after the bad guys. It
turns out to be much bigger than just a single frame - it is an organization
of killers, cleaners and more. And run by another computer genius who sees
and knows almost everything that is on the grid. So you have these two computer
geeks trying to outsmart each other. It just goes kooky and the final 40
minutes is an adrenaline rush of car chases, beatings, action and more car
chases. At the end you have to ask yourself a question - was the part after
the video game, also a video game? And does it really matter? It is slick,
stylish and paper thin but it holds your attention till the end.
I was amazed to find out after I finished
watching it that this was directed by Park Kwang-hyun, whose film before
this one was Welcome to Dongmakgol twelve years previously in 2005. It was
a huge box office hit and a wonderful magical film - but as different from
this as one can imagine.
