Korean Movie Night: Going by the Book 바르게 살자 (2007) Korean

Jung Jae Young, Son Byung Ho, Uhm Soo Jung, Lee Young Eun, Ko Chang Seok

Movie rating: 7/10      Neck score: A

We've started consistently watching a movie every weekend, which is good, because there are so many good ones to see.  I wish I could be just as consistent in remembering to post a review of them.  It's less of a time commitment, so I guess I forget that much faster.

This is one that one of my friends (the one who recommended Hero to me) has been trying to get us to see for forever.  So we had a Korean night, we out to eat and then watched this.  It is, indeed, hilarious.  It has such subtle humor too.  It is about a detective who was demoted to a traffic cop, who is known for causing problems by being to literal.  He follows the book to the letter.  He even gave his new chief a speeding ticket the first time he met him.  That literal.  He's so earnest and dry about it too.  It's just like, of course I have to, that's what I'm supposed to do, etc.

So there are some bank robbers who are notorious and not caught yet.  To prepare the city, the new chief decides to hold a realistic training scenario.  He decides that this former detective traffic cop is the perfect person to play the role of the bank robber.  I don't know if he wanted him to be that perfect, but what happened was perfectly hilarious.

I loved how serious everyone was taking it.  He planned it out so thoroughly, and we get to see how it goes in his head, versus how he stages it in real life (with signs that say "dead" or "tied up") so it gets a bit psychological and hypothetical.  The level of dedication in planning is just genius.  The bank employees and patrons are so dedicated to playing along for the sake of the training that some super great conversations about what is hypothetically happening, and whether or not he could have been stopped at certain points happen.  The hostages become his team in creating the perfect execution of this scenario, its all just too funny, and very matter-of-fact humor.  It's a good one.

114. My Secret Hotel 마이 시크릿 호텔 (2014) Korean

Yoo In Ah, Jin Lee Han, Nam Goong Min, Lee Young Eun

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A

Well, things went a little bit cray cray.  I admit it took a while for me to get into it... to the love story, not the murder mystery part.  I liked that part, but I felt like it didn't get enough screen time.  And it didn't.  Overall it was a likable drama, but just very sloppily put together.  Especially the love story, which they dragged out way too long, making us so frustrated and hating on the main girl because we thought it was all her fault, and then only finding things out until the last minute.  There was way not enough payoff at the end... sad day.  But one thing that this show had a good amount of was beautiful clothing.  Boy, was everyone dressed super well!  I wrote a whole post about it, I was so in love with everyone's fashion!  Especially the main dude's best friend, who wore the best suits and also happened to be the handsomest man in the show.  So really, it was just badly written, but the main writer died after only writing like 4 episodes... so it wasn't going to reach it's full potential anyways.  I still liked it, but it was frustrating as all get out with how much they withheld and made everyone so wishy washy and flip floppy, not giving us quite enough hints in some aspects.  I am proud to say that I called almost every one of the twists before it happened (even if it was only moments before with some of them... in the last episode which is way too late to reveal things... but anyways) so, ta da!  Pat myself on the back.  I did like the whole murder mystery theme.  I wish that it had been more prominent in the show.