KOREA MOVES: Meeting the Seoul men behind ‘City Of Violence’
I took the redder than red eye to Korea, taking off from Hong Kong at midnight, landing at Seoul in the early hours, sleep-walking through immigration and customs, sleeping on the airport bus, sleeping in a taxi, finally in a room at the Renaissance. I rouse myself sufficiently to meet our crew at 10am, and we head across the city to the offices of R & K Film Co.
R & K is the creative force behind the breakthrough actioner City Of Violence, which will be our first Korean release on the Dragon Dynasty label. The ‘R’ is actor/director Ryoo Seung-wan, the ‘K’ is Kang Hye-jeong, his partner, wife and the mother of their three children. You look like my sister!, I exclaim to the latter, much to her consternation. I summon Kate’s website (check out our Links section to do the same) and she concedes a slight resemblance. This vague family connection seems apt, as R & K feels very much like an extended family business.
Director Ryoo cast his brother, Ryoo Seung-brom, as the lead in his earlier FX action epic Arahan. His brother-in-arms, Jung Doo-hong, choreographed both that film and the later Crying Fist. Ryoo and Jung both star in City Of Violence, which they directed and choreographed, respectively.
Ryoo himself greets us warmly. His office is a shrine to his inspirations and aspirations, with posters and images from films of all nations covering every inch of available wall space. There are two huge Kill Bill posters, which seems to explain the occasional Bill-styled riffs in City Of Violence. There is also a nod to Walter Hill’s The Warriors (with a gang of face-painted thugs in baseball uniforms), and, when asked to cite his western cinema influences, Ryu starts with Sergio Leone and keeps on going! City Of Violence itself has become a seminal film, with a couple of scenes at the end of the movie shadowed in the Donnie Yen epic Dragon Tiger Gate.
The director is a slightly built, amiable figure, but evidently tougher than he appears. Ryoo tells us that he tore a leg muscle early in the film’s shoot, but kept fighting regardless. He is planning a movie called Yacha, which blends action and horror, and I ask him who will star in it. I can only tell you who won’t star in it, he quips. Me! A bona fide cineaste, he reveals that he’s hoping to shoot a TV interview with Shaun Of The Dead director Edgar Wright when the latter visits Korea later this year.
Action director Jung Doo-hong is tanned, lean and taut as a drawn bowstring. When he first worked in the business, he was the youngest action director in Korean cinema. He went on to define a whole new style of kimchee-flavoured martial arts choreography, which he showed off in such films as Musa, Born To Kill and No Blood, No Tears. He also created the action scenes for the two great Korean war epics Silmido and Taegukgi. Following the example of his Hong Kong idols, Kang started playing acting roles as well. He reveals that he tried out for the Sanada Hiroyuki role in Rush Hour 3. (Ask any of the Korean action guys who their idol is, and they invariably say ‘Jackie Chan’.)
We also meet actor Lee Beom-su, who plays the villain of the piece. In the tradition of great movie bad guys from Peter Lorre onwards, Lee is as charming off camera as he is menacing on. I ask him if he’s been to Hong Kong, and he tells me that he spent three months there shooting My Wife Is A Gangster 3. I ask him if he remembers working with my friend Ken Lo, but, of course, I don’t know Ken’s Korean name. I try to jog his memory by reenacting the final reel of Drunken Master 2, and risk incurring the same injury suffered by Ryu. We also interviewed the charming and multi-talented Kim Jeong-min, who both co-produced and co-wrote the film.
What makes our visit especially charming is how our sincere desire to communicate seems to overcome the language barrier. None of the team speak fluent English, or rather, this being Seoul, I should say that I don’t speak Korean. (I suspect Ms. Kan Hye-Jeong actually speaks excellent English, but she shyly declines to be interviewed in that language.) I’m indebted to the charming Mina Kang, graciously on loan from CJ Entertainment (the distributors of City Of Violence) for conducting the interviews in Korean, and general translation services. Raised somewhere south of London, Mina speaks the Queen’s English with an accent that could cut glass, but has a raucous laugh besides.
To date, Korean action cinema, though well received in the UK and Europe, has yet to make an impact in the US market. Breakthrough titles such as Shiri, JSA and Old Boy did modest business on DVD, and the most successful Korean theatrical release, Stateside, remains director Kim Ki-duk’s arthouse film Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Given its blend of innovative visuals and high impact martial arts fight scenes, I hope City Of Violence can connect with the growing audience for Asian actioners. A director who risked the kind of physical injury that Ryu did deserves his cult to be better cultivated.
Comments
- mina kang, in her little world of eternal praise | 2007-05-12 08:56:34
- Robin, Norway | 2007-05-12 10:58:41
- T!GERMAN, Rising Tiger Inc. | 2007-05-22 20:25:03
- Darren, Hong Kong | 2007-05-11 11:46:50