Rough Cut
AKA: Yeong-hwa-neun yeong-hwa-da; A Movie is a Movie
Dir. Hun Jang (South Korea 2008)
Rating: 3 out of 4 Stars (good)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

ROUGH CUT PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER ON JUNE 23 AT 9:30 PM AND ON JUNE 24 AT 6:30 PM. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE

I am tempted to dismiss Rough Cut as just another Korean gangster film, filled with “cooler-than-thou” characters who engage in brutal fisticuffs every ten minutes or so, like so many of its predecessors. In many ways it is just that. However, Rough Cut has a little more on its mind, mingling the worlds of filmmaking and organized crime, and playing with notions of artifice and reality in interesting ways.

Rough Cut blurs the distinction between truth and fiction from the get-go, setting its story during the filming of (what else?) a gangster film. The lead actor, Su Tae (Kang Ji-Hwan), is obsessed with “keeping it real.” His tough-guy posturing and desire to fight for real eventually lead to injured co-stars and problems on the set of the film-within-a-film - a gangster opus in which he and a rival compete over the same girl (played in the film by “actress” Kang Mi-Na, in turn played by real actress Hong Su-Hyeon). Fiction becomes a form of truth when Su Tae persuades gangster and former wannabe actor Gang-Pae (So Ji-Seob) to join the film on the condition that they do everything “for real.”

Each man admires and despises the other on some level and the tension between the two is palpable. Su Tae is not all bluff and exaggeration, though his celebrity has convinced him that he is invulnerable. He’s initially unafraid of Gang-Pae and his associates, and willing to get physical … up to a point. Su Tae’s macho attitude disguises a cringing inability to deal with his real-world problems and he quickly realizes that bravado only goes so far. Su Tae’s violence, after all, is mere playacting, an attempt to prove something to himself or others. Gang-Pae, on the other hand, is not out to prove anything. His acts of violence are deadly serious, and treated as such. Gang-Pae is stoic in the face of work-related troubles far more problematic than Su Tae. Moreover, he proves capable of beating Su Tae at his own game – exuding effortless charisma Gang-Pae soon wins over director and lead actress.

Admittedly, Rough Cut is not quite as clever as it thinks it is, nor does it take its ideas nearly as far as it could have. Director Hun Jang allows the proceedings to coast quite a bit on the strength of So Ji-Seob’s performance. Fortunately for the film, as for the film-within-a-film, it is a star-making turn that should launch his career on the big screen. The layers of pretense and complexity added by the film’s driving conceit - further considering that in the real world, both are actors, one an actor playing the role of an actor and the other an actor playing the role of the actor – merely add icing to the cake. When Gang-Pae and Su-Tae finally go at it, the audience is left to ponder a fight scene staged between actors who are pretending to be actors who are fighting for real in a film in a film in which they are supposed to be pretending to fight. It’ll give you something to think about while the punches land.

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The Clone Returns Home
AKA: Kurôn wa kokyô o mezasu
Director: Kanji Nakajima (Japan 2008)
Starring: Mitsuhiro Oikawa, Eri Ishida, Hiromi Nagasaku
Review by: Charlie Prince

THE CLONE RETURNS HOME PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER ON JUNE 22 AT 9:30 PM AND ON JULY 1 AT 11:00 AM. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE

[Charlie caught this back at Sundance in January and his review is reprinted below.]

The Clone Returns Home is not for everyone. Although it was billed by critics as one of the top “must see” works at Sundance this year, it is at heart a capital-A art film that will appeal to a very limited audience. Put more plainly, this film is extraordinarily SLOW. For example, the film includes what I think of as the ultimate “film festival scene” — a scene that is tolerated and even celebrated at film festivals, but would be booed off the screen in any kind of normal theater environment. The classic “film festival scene” is a staple of The Clone Returns Home and goes something like this: we see a giant field, or beach or other large open expanse. From the far side of the screen, we notice someone walk into frame, though we’re so far away we may not even realize at first that it is a person. Then, lucky us, we get to watch in real time as this person slowly walks across the field or beach or whatever over several eon-bearing minutes. During such scenes, there is often no dialogue, no plot developing, and nothing to pay attention to — think of it charitably as a chance to reflect on what happened in the previous scene (since there is nothing else to do), or less charitably as an informal bathroom break. That is the film festival scene, and it occurs several times in The Clone Returns Home. Not everyone hates this, I’m assured, and extremely patient audiences may enjoy it, but my guess is many people will find it tedious.

Which is a shame, because there are some interesting philosophical concepts in the film (lurking in between takes of people slowly crossing fields), and I suspect I would have enjoyed a more tightly edited film. Billed as the thinking person’s sci-fi film, it tells the story of Kohei, a young astronaut who agrees to take out an “insurance policy” so that in the event he accidentally dies, a clone will be made of him, so that he can continue to live and to provide for his loved ones by way of the clone. But in addition to the ethical debates raised by the concept of cloning generally, it turns out there are all sorts of technical problems to producing a clone. As an initial problem, the first Kohei clone to be produced is too perfect — he remembers everything from earlier in his life, including many things that are better left forgotten (especially an incident involving his brother which has always haunted him). (Small spoiler ahead this paragraph only) So, the company decides to go ahead and produce another clone, thinking the first, failed clone had died. Soon, however, clones are bumping into each other, it turns out there is a strange “resonance” that affects clones and allows them to hear things other people can‘t — all of which ends up being very confusing for those in the audience who didn‘t fall asleep.

In full disclosure, I did start to nod off on this one, but I tend to think of that as a film festival’s version of natural selection — for those of us running around seeing films from 7am until 2am, we’re barely able to stay awake. The great movies captivate us and wake us up no matter how tired we are, but if a movie’s overly slow, dull or otherwise a stinker, no matter how hard we might try, we start to nod off. I hate it when that happens, but it is an efficient alert system for dull movies.