Tuesday, June 14, 2011

RUNNING TURTLE (2009)

I enjoyed Yun-seok Kim's energetic performance in THE CHASER so I decided check out his follow-up film and kinda like his character in THE CHASER he's once again chasing down a criminal on his own.

Kim is a cop. Everybody calls him Officer Jo. He takes bribes, entraps criminals and he spends a lot of time illegally gambling. One day while trying to make some money while on a 3 month suspension he's out gambling at a bullfight and he wins big. Later that night he goes to collect his winnings when he has a run in with a fugitive criminal, Song Gitae. Jo sees this as an opportunity to get off of suspension so he confronts the dude and the dude beats the shit out of him, steals his money and handcuffs his arm to his leg. That's the fist battle is a growing personal war between the down and out Officer Jo and Song Gitae.

The story is nothing original, but I enjoyed the film especially the small humorous touches thrown in occasionally to remind the viewer not to take things too seriously. The funniest was when in an act of desperation Jo grabs the microphone from a vendor to publicly declare a hand-to-hand fight challenge to Song and the entire time he's yelling threats into the mic there this horribly shitty rock music in the background. Small touches like that I find really funny.

It's not a great movie, but I was entertained and once again I was really impressed with Kim Yun-seok's range of emotion. I'm looking forward to seeing his other films.

Definitely worth a rent.
The lighting on the main fight scene was too dark.