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.

141. Hero 히어로 (2012) Korean

Yang Dong Geun, Han Chae Ah, Son Byung Ho, Choi Chul Ho, Park Won Sang

Drama Rating: 9/10     Neck Score: B

Total dude show.  Post-apocalyptic, futuristic, and just fun.  I would have enjoyed it more if I had been consistent in watching it, but even though it was only 9 episodes long, I took like three months to watch it.  The best part about it is that our hero is so apathetic, immature, and disrespectful of everything.  Basically he is hilarious and just in it for the fun of it.  I loved how he chases the pretty cop around, getting into her business and stuff.  But it also has good character progression, because although he starts out just doing it for fun, or to help his cop crush, he starts seeing the injustice and doing it for the right reasons.  It's very Batman-esque though, complete with the black costume, mask vigilante thing, and his butler friend, who we called Alfred.  The fight scenes were either super fast, or slow-mo, so you know they are good stuff.  It was always funny and intriguing, and moves at a good pace.  In fact, they could have easily made it a full 16 episodes.  9 was just too few... even though scheduling made me watch it so spread out.  But that was because of time and my friend's schedule, and not because it was draggy or I didn't like it.  It was good.