"Marine Boy" 2009

Today’s film came to me through the generous efforts of a colleague who recently went to Korea and so admirably trekked across Seoul to a specific book store called Seoul Selection (Hank’s Book store from the outside) with a list of films I had E-mailed her. Thanks to her efforts I was able to watch Marine Boy, a guilty pleasure of an action movie.


Suffice it to say this is not one of those films Americans watching will see anything new from. Hollywood is the undisputed king of the action movie. So just know up front there’s no new ground covered here cinematically, lie say in the movie Shiri or even Nowhere to Hide.

There are good guys who we root for (even though the main character isn’t that sympathetic…simply handsome with a swimmer’s build) and bad guys who almost chew the scenery frothing at the mouth.

There are plots and plot twists so convoluted and strained that at one point I couldn’t keep up. A part of me was saying, “This is such crap” while another part was saying, “Man, these are pretty people!” The only twist I didn’t predict was the very end. I mean I knew there’d be a happy ending for the main couple, but director YUN Jogn-seok pulled one over on me.

Without giving too much of the “plot” away…hehehehe…Choen-soo (played by the dashing, sometimes even likeable KIM Kang-woo) is a swimming coach, a job incidental to the plot…not that we ever see him coaching…all we see him do is gamble and get into trouble. He falls into hard times and to pay off a gambling debt (tired plot device #1 of many) he agrees to swim drugs across from Japan to Korea. There’s lots of double crossing (even in the back story) and suffice it to say that by the end it’s a veritable battle royal on a cliff between four people all with an axe to grind. Whatever happened to “Can’t we all just get along?”

The camera work is superb, special effects…check! I would have loved to see more ocean scenes…I mean this is called Marine Boy after all, but alas most of them are at night in what looked to me like Titanic’s CGI leftovers. For me the most enjoyment came from watching JO Jae-hyun as the Head gangster who hires/extorts Choen-soo to swim for him (I loved him in Hanbando) replay when ased, “Do I have a choice?” His character says, “Choice is for the winners. And when a winner gives you a choice…there’s really no choice.” Very Zen.

So not much to hoot about, just a fun, mindless, pretty film with just enough shooting to keep the foreign folk happy. This film is definitely worth seeing for fun, but don’t leave all your willing suspension of disbelief laying around. This movie will soak it all up!