Directed with style by Dae-min Park (Special Delivery).
Written by Young-jong Lee, Dae-min Park, and Seon-hee Yoon. The excellent Cinematography was by Chan-min Choi, Music by Sang-joon Hwang.
The film stars Hwang Jung-min as Hong Jin-ho (private detective), Ryu Deok-hwan as Jang Gwang-soo (medical student), Uhm Ji-won as Soon-deok (inventor), Oh Dal-su as Oh Young-dal (police officer), Yoon Je-moon as Eok-kwan (circus master), Go Jun as Herb doctor Yoo Seung-mok.
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| Hwang Jung-min as Hong Jin-ho |
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| Ryu Deok-hwan as Jang Gwang-soo |
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| Uhm Ji-won as Soon-deok |
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| Oh Dal-su as Oh Young-dal |
Seoul, Korea. 1910. Korea is a protectorate of the Empire of Japan.
Night. Fog. The Forest.
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A kerosene lantern "headlight" swings from a stick tied to the front of a wheelbarrow. A man weaves his way through trees with swaying shadows against fog blanked woods. In a small clearing the man finds a bound body. We get a couple of good views of the dead mans face. The man cuts the bounds turns him over and and drags the dead body by the feet to the wheelbarrow.
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He loads him in, and wheels him off. Cut to.
Private Eye Hong Jin-ho, is a window peeper, a bedroom dick. He specializes in finding cheating wives catching them in the act for suspicious husbands. He'll remind you of Darren McGavin's Kolchak The Night Stalker character.
Kolchak ran around Vegas in a seersucker jacket and a straw Panama. A newspaper reporter who becomes a de facto Detective chasing clues to a vampire. Anyway, Hong also wears a straw Panama and light grey suit.
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He uses a telescoping periscope that lets him look around walls, corners and in windows. He dreams of saving enough money and sailing off to America. More people more work.
When we first see him he is in a narrow alley and has caught his client. Mr. Kim's, wife, screwing a boyfriend. She must do it regularly.
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He has prearranged for Mr. Kim to join him there. He has set up his periscope so that it looks into a storehouse window and he collects his fee from Mr. Kim before he lets him look. Kim peers through the eyepiece and sees his cheating wife in action.
Hong counts the cash while Mr. Kim storms off swearing to kill them both. Hong in what looks a very well practiced routine quickly removes the eye piece end of the periscope, and replaces it with a small camera. He also attaches a flash to the top of the periscope. He uses a finger in a circular motion to open the petals of the flash pan around the bulb. He resets the periscope over the sill and looks through viewfinder and takes a flash picture of Mr. Kim breaking into the storeroom interrupting the lovers.
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Cut to a newspaper office where Hong sells the very same photo of Mr. Kim in the storeroom to the local newspaper. The rags editor tries to dicker but Hong gets his 5 won. So he cashes in two ways.
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Jang Gwang-soo is a promising medical student going for his doctors degree. He becomes a favorite of the head of surgery because he seems to know his way around the human body. The head of surgery commends Jang and asks him how he has learned so much. Jang lies and replies that he dissects dead animals, The head of surgery tells Jang that he should practice on cadavers.
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What he doesn't know is that Jang recently found a dumped dead body in the forest and came back at night and took it off with a wheelbarrow to his makeshift operating room where he is performing various procedures.
Meanwhile a crime has been committed, the governors son has disappeared and may have been kidnapped, but by the amount of blood found in his room. the police detective assigned Oh Young-dal is not certain the the boy is still alive. He BS's the minister to console him, but has his subordinate get him a list of the possible suspects.
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Jang Gwang-soo discovers that the corpse he thought was an unclaimed outcast, is actually the ministers dead son, and he's already dissected it so he can't go to the police.
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He's desperate and happens to see one of Hong Jin-ho's advertisements, they are billboard posters that he pastes up on walls around town.
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| Hong Jin-ho's billboard advertising posters |
So Jang goes to Hong's tells him the story and offers him 500 won to find the real murder of the ministers son. Hong agrees to help.
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Hong also has a friend who is a scientist / inventor Soon-deok. Soon is sort of a renegade woman from a high society, a genius who is like in the Dick Tracy comic strip a character similar to industrialist Diet Smith's son Brilliant (the guy who invented Dick Tracy's 2-Way Wrist Radio). Soon's laboratory / workshop is like a " fortress of solitude" set up in a deserted factory warehouse. It has a neat security set up with mirrors. that works in effect like a modern video surveillance system. Soon provides Hong with some of his gadgets the "far seeing eye" a "secret listener" based on a stethoscope, and pepper spray.
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| Soon-deok's hidden laboratory |
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| The mirror surveillance system |
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| A crucifix key engages the doorway mechanism |
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| The deserted portion of the warehouse |
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Meanwhile, it all goes starts going Noirsville when, Oh Young-dal, without a dead body and trying to save face with the minister sets up a patsy that confesses to the crime.
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Unfortunately for Oh Young-dal another corpse is dumped in the woods exactly as Jang Gwang-soo described. The body belongs to the police commissioner and has multiple knife wounds and has his hands bound behind his back also.
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| The commissioner's body |
Jang is hand picked to assist on the autopsy and discovers a piece of cloth in the commissioners mouth. Apparently the commissioner bit off the fabric from the garment of his killer.
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Soon is able to restore a piece of scrap cloth found. It has a flower pattern. That and since they have the original body they do an cast of a wound to determine the kind of weapon was used.
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Soon is able to restore a piece of scrap cloth found. It has a flower pattern. That and since they have the original body they do an cast of a wound to determine the kind of weapon was used. It was a double bladed throwing knife. The flower pattern and the throwing knife lead them to Eok-kwan a knife throwing Circus Master.
Noirsville
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This film is a clever homage with some nice twists. It takes a Classic Hollywood Noir staple, the hardboiled detective film, and puts a nice Korean twist on it. It's similar to what Jee-woon Kim's The Good, The Bad, and The Weird (2008) did just the year before with Spaghetti Westerns. So you can call it a Pho Detective Story.
Because of the subtitles it won't be clear that not all the characters are Korean, some of the them are Japanese (i.e., the head doctor.)
It a fun film that moves right along. We get some circus / carnival sequences, a great magic / juggling sequence that starts off using folding fans with a paper butterfly and folding fan fight scenes, a humorous sequence of Hong and Jang visiting an opium den, and there's even a cool rickshaw case through the streets of 1910 Seoul. Call it a Korean Kerosene Lamp Noir. Bravo! 10/10.
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