Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
3/29/07
It's a big ol' globalized
world out there, and that's reflected in a movie marketplace that hasn't
been this friendly to actors and films from all over the world since at
least the 60's. As a result, American audiences now see all manner
of International Co-Productions and the crème de la crème
of movies made by top directors all over the world. As a result of
this climate, it's hard to believe that many movies of budget and scale
are being made anymore that don't give at least some thought to global
distribution while they're being written, making sure that their stories
aren't too regional to click with an international audience. But
I enjoy occasionally catching filmmakers from other countries, and thus
their audiences, when they think I'm not looking. After all, which
do you think will teach you more about what the people of Great Britain
are like: listening to Tony Blair talk for an hour or watching an
episode of Doctor Who? This ads an extra layer of fascination
to the shaggy dog Korean sci-fi/horror/political satire/family comedy The
Host (or Gwoemul, as it was known by its' intended audience).
It's messy and odd, but also funny, exciting, and seemingly very Korean.
A rotten American scientist
(Scott Wilson) working in South Korea orders a subordinate to dump dozens
of jars of “dirty formaldehyde” down a drain that leads straight to the
Han River. Years later, a giant monster born of this contamination
emerges from the water and attacks the mainland right by the food stand
run by the Park family: father Hie-Bong (Byeon Hie-Bong), embittered
Nam-Il (Park Hae-Il), archery Bronze Medalist Nam-Joo (Bae Doo-Na), slacker
son Gang-Do (Song Kang-Ho), and his daughter Hyun-Seo (Ko A-Sung).
Rampaging along the shore, the creature serious wounds an American soldier
(David Joseph Anselmo) and splatters its' blood on Gang-Do before grabbing
Hyun-Seo and vanishing beneath the ocean. Everyone's sure the little
girl is dead, but she places a cell phone call from the beast's lair to
Gang-Do, who's being held by authorities convinced that the creature is
carrying a lethal virus. Soon, he escapes and the entire family is
on the trail of the monster. But can they save Hyun-Seo before impatient
Americans release the lethal anti-viral compound Agent Yellow into the
river?
Taken individually, The
Host does a lot of things well. As a Little Miss Sunshine-style
family comedy, it's extremely funny. The creature is one of the best
you'll ever see, a freakish four-legged fish with a disgusting multi-jointed
mouth and a tail it uses to swing and fly with the skill of an Olympic
gymnast. The political satire, with nervous Americans ready to drop
their interventionist hammer for reasons that increasingly defy common
sense, is amusingly broad. It's just that the movie isn't always
successful at integrating all these elements into a single, cohesive whole,
and often loses track of characters and plot threads for long periods of
time while it tries to keep its' many plates spinning. The characters'
climactic stand against the beast during the Agent Yellow attack is particularly
confusing, with several key characters' fates more hinted at than shown.
Even with so much going on, the second act's pace also tends to drag.
One things that struck me
as interesting (as someone with little knowledge of day-to-day Korean culture)
was the way the English and Korean languages intermingle: both are
spoken freely, and the credits mix them to the point of often having Korean
names credited for English Language tasks and vice-versa. The actors
succeed in being quite funny despite the language barrier: I particularly
enjoyed Park Hae-Il's disgust with just about everything, from his own
unemployment to his family's antics. Byeon Hie-Bong is delightfully
beaten-down as the father (his speech about how Gang-Do's failings can
all be explained by the lack of protein in his childhood diet is a hoot)
and Paul Lazar has a couple of funny scenes as an American doctor
who can take any fact about the virus's absence and use it as further proof
that it exists. I wish the plot had kept the Parks together longer:
once they're split up, none of their characters are as interesting as they
were as a group.
It was interesting to watch
the movie's “American stereotypes”: the ridiculously virile, take-charge
soldier and the incompetent scientists capable of formulating a logical
argument for anything (“The Han River is a very broad river. Let
us be broad in our thinking.”) give us a chance to see how we look in someone
else's mirror. A little research informed me that an incident very
similar to the “dirty formaldehyde down the drain” sequence actually occurred
in 2000 (although it was the chemicals' effect on the locals' drinking
water rather than any giant monsters they might spawn that was at issue).
And the fear of an irrational American crackdown on a mystery virus is
pretty clearly a comment on SARS (right down to the masks everyone wears
to protect themselves from... whatever). These are, of course, the
same superficial reenactments of timely concerns we'd expect in an American
bio-horror movie, it's just more interesting/educational when they're someone
else's concerns.
All that cultural novelty
is a bonus, but the heart of The Host is two things that work in
any language: a classically nasty monster and a funny dysfunctional
family. They don't necessarily play well together, but they're both
good enough to merit a look. |
