Past Lives: What might have been?

Past Lives (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for fleeting profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.6.23

All of us have paths not taken — mostly insignificant, a few consequential — that prompt occasional curiosity and speculation.

 

But some folks obsess over an emotionally weighty What If, to the point that it interferes with their ability to focus on the alternative happiness that has been achieved.

 

What might they be thinking? Nora (Greta Lee), flanked by Hae Sung (Teo Yoo, left)
and Arthur (John Magaro) contemplates the life choices that have led to this moment.

Writer/director Celine Song’s gentle drama opens on a provocative tableau: three people — two men, with a woman between them — sitting quietly at one end of a bar. Two are Korean, one American. Nobody says anything; the woman’s expression changes — not quite readably — as she glances from one companion to the other. Flirty? Wary? Satisfied? Indecisive?

We hear an off-camera couple try to suss out the dynamic (a game we’ve all played, while people-watching). Who is the woman with? Are the Koreans siblings? Are the guys with each other? Is somebody being dumped?

 

Therein lies a tale…

 

We jump back 24 years, to Seoul, and meet 12-year-old chums Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min), as they head home after a day at school. She’s in tears, having come in second to Hae Sung, on a class paper. He turns this back on her, pointing out that he usually has come in second behind her, and besides; shouldn’t she be happy for his success?

 

After all, they’re inseparable besties. 

 

Even so, she aspires to greatness: She wants to win a Nobel Prize.

 

Sadly, events are about to separate them. Nora’s parents are emigrating the family to New York. Na Young will be given a new “American” name — Nora — and her sister will become Michelle.

 

But before this occurs, Na Young and Hae Sung’s mothers arrange for the two to have a “date” … perhaps more “play date,” but — as cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s playful tableaus reveal — love clearly is in the air, at a 12-year-old level that’s deeper than a simple crush.

 

Their final parting is telling, due to the way Song and Kirchner frame the moment: After a perfunctory “Bye” from Hae Sung, Na Young charges up the steep street to her home, without looking back; he watches for a moment, before sadly heading along the level side street to his home.

 

Ambition vs. devotion.

 

Yaksha: Ruthless Operations — a taut, fast-paced spy thriller

Yasha: Ruthless Operations (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-14, for violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

We need to pay more attention to South Korean cinema; their espionage thrillers are much better than anything cranked out by Hollywood lately.

 

Han Ji-hoon (Park Hae-soo, back to camera) gets nothing but scornful dismissal from the
black ops team he has just met: from left, Jae-gyu (Song Jae-lim), Hui-won (Lee El),
Manager Hong (Yang Dong-keun), Jeong-dae (Park Jim-young) and Ji Gang-in
(Sul Kyung-gu)

Director Na Hyun’s Yaksha — with the silly subtitle “Ruthless Operations” added for its U.S. debut — is an excellent example. Calling this sleek, fast-paced romp “stylized” is an understatement; Hyun, editor Kim Sang-beom and their production team blend twisty spycraft, double- and triple-crosses with pulsating action set-pieces that make excellent use of visually dynamic locations.

It’s also fascinating to see an entirely different cultural approach to espionage issues: points of view wholly unlike the usual American take on the Far East.

 

The premise from scripters Ahn Sang-hoon and Na Hyun is irresistible: An idealistic, by-the-book civilian suddenly gets tossed among a ruthless black-ops team accustomed to street justice in pursuit of the greater good. Our naïve protagonist is horrified by the extremes exercised by his new companions, just as they’re thoroughly disgusted by his namby-pamby faith in a broken system.

 

Meanwhile, all concerned are trying to ferret out a mole who’s been compromising Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) operations.

 

Following a brief and violent prologue — the significance of which becomes clear only later — we meet Han Ji-hoon (Park Hae-soo), a buttoned-down prosecutor with Seoul’s Central District Prosecutor’s Office. He’s in the final stages of indicting Lee Chan-young (Choi Won-young), the obviously corrupt chairman of the Sangin Group; the case seems air-tight… 

 

…until a procedural error is revealed.

 

Chairman Lee walks free; Ji-hoon is humiliated. (Choi milks this moment with maximum condescending smarm.)

 

Desperate to regain his professional stature, Ji-hoon accepts an unusual assignment from Yeom Jeong-won (Jin Kyung), director of NIS foreign intelligence activities. She’s troubled by reports coming from a black ops team headed by Ji Gang-in (Sul Kyung-gu) in Shenyang, China; the intel feels … wrong. Fabricated. Too benign to be true.

 

Believing this is just the sort of task for which his skills are best suited, Ji-hoon heads to Shenyang and liaises with Section Manager Hong (Yang Dong-keun). The latter encourages this young upstart to forget the assignment, enjoy the sights for awhile, and then file a neutral report. Incensed, Ji-hoon demands to accompany Gang-in — who prefers the nickname Yaksha — and his team on their next mission.

Space Sweepers: A hoot 'n' a holler

Space Sweepers (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated TV-MA, for profanity and sci-fi violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.12.21

This South Korean sci-fi epic — the country’s first “space blockbuster,” and an import for Netflix — is absolutely dog-nuts.

 

It’s also a lot of fun.

 

Tae-ho (Song Joong-Ki, left), Jang (Kim Tae-ri, right) and the robot Bubs find something
extremely unusual in their latest haul of space salvage.

Scripters Yoon Seung-min, Yoo-kang Seo-ae and Jo Sung-hee “borrow” from a variety of predecessors — Silent Running, Blade Runner and Elysium immediately come to mind — and overlay those familiar elements with a cheeky original premise. Director Sung-hee Jo’s handling is somewhat chaotic, which befits the rather “messy” future inhabited by a quartet of misfit heroes.

 

The year is 2092. Earth has become an environmental nightmare, with fading sunlight and increasingly acidic soil contributing to the spread of deserts, and the destruction of forests. Thanks to a technological “miracle” orchestrated by the UTS Corp., the wealthy and “connected” enjoy luxurious living in a massive, verdant and enclosed habitat orbiting Earth, reachable via a geosynchronous “space elevator” (long one of my favorite sci-fi concepts, and one that actually might be practical on lower-gravity worlds such as Mars and our Moon).

 

The rest of humanity is stuck on the planet’s poisonous surface.

 

Ah, but all is not lost. UTS head James Sullivan (Richard Armitage) — doctor, physicist, aerospace engineer, historian and the world’s richest and oldest man (at a spry 152) — has ambitious plans to terraform Mars, transforming it into the forested paradise that Earth used to be. 

 

Meanwhile…

 

Thanks to more than a century of orbital development, the region above Earth has become its own nightmare, as satellites fail and other floating debris turns hazardous. This has created a new business model for rag-tag independents, who earn a meager living as orbital garbage collectors: “catching” and then salvaging space junk.

 

It’s a ruthlessly competitive, wholly unregulated industry, and the champs staff a nuts-and-bolts spaceship dubbed Victory. Its four-person crew comprises genius pilot Tae-ho (Song Joong-Ki); the somewhat mysterious, ex-space pirate Capt. Jang (Kim Tae-ri); resourceful and heavily tattooed engineer Tiger Park (Jim Sun-kyu); and a reprogrammed military robot named Bubs (Yoo Hai-jin).

 

The latter is impressively adept with a cable-fed harpoon, which — being a robot — it can hurl while standing atop the Victory’s exterior.