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The Coast Guard
review by Derek Elley (Variety)
September 15, 2003
Fest fave Kim Ki-duk largely treads water with "The Coast Guard," a straight arrow, emotionally intense drama centered on a nutty South Korean soldier that plays like a Cliff Notes version of the director's oeuvre to date. The movie looks like falling between two stools: Newcomers to the helmer's quirky world are unlikely to be convinced by the dramatic flourishes, while enthusiasts will miss the strong individual signatures of pics like "Bad Guy" and "The Isle." Film looks certain to paddle in the fest circuit but theatrical buyers are more likely to bide their time until the director's next outing, "Spring Summer Autumn Winter...and Spring," already in post.
Despite its flaws, "Coast Guard" still has much going for it, including a charismatic main perf by hunky Jang Dong-geun ("Friend," "2009 ?Lost Memories") and an admirably tight storyline that, unlike his military-centered "Address Unknown," maintains its focus. It's also the director's most political movie to date, a dark satire on the armed hysteria between North and South that also has relevance way beyond the Korean peninsula.
World premiering Nov. 14 at the Pusan festival, film garnered a mixed reception, though some of that was the result of being misprogramed in the opening night slot. (It's hardly a feel good, pre-party movie.) Picture opened softly on commercial release Nov. 22, opposite comedy blockbuster "Jail Breakers."
As an opening caption reminds the audience, even nowadays anyone entering South Korea's coastline after dark can be considered a (North Korean) spy and shot on sight. Among the members of Coast Guard Platoon 23, monitoring a high-infiltration stretch of beach lined with barb wire fencing, is Kang Han-cheol (Jang), an ordinary private who takes his job a mite too seriously.
Brainwashed by his superiors' pronouncement that catching a spy means honors for life, Kang is a patriotic time bomb waiting to go off. While his colleagues relax playing soccer, Kang prowls the long grass with camouflage makeup and rifle. For him, sport is beating the bejeezus out of his mates in a barbed-wire boxing ring built in the shallows -- one of several images that give the film its end-of-the-world, allegorical flavor.
The soldiers are despised by the local villagers ("there aren't any spies any longer," notes one), who are more interested in fishing, drinking and playing cards. Among them is sullen fishmonger Cheol-gu (Yu Hae-jin) and his sister, Mi-yeong (Park Ji-ah).
One night, when Mi-yeong and her b.f. unadvisedly tryst on the beach, Kang mistakes the latter for a North Korean spy and, in a hysterical outburst, blows the guy to bits while the couple are still in flagrante. In a section that will test some auds' tolerance of the pic's black humor, Mi-yeong, covered in her b.f.'s blood and bodyparts, rapidly goes into trauma; Kang, despite protests by the villagers, is officially congratulated and given seven days' leave.
When he returns, more loony tunes than ever, Kang is beaten up by the locals and eventually discharged from the army as unfit for duty. However, he still hangs around the base, like a mad ghost unable to leave the banquet. Meanwhile, Mi-yeong has completely jumped the rails, silently wandering the seashore and copulating like crazy with half the platoon.
Aficionados of Kim's films will be busy making a checklist of refs to earlier works. Just for starters, there's a crazed central figure whose only vocabulary is violence ("Bad Guy"); a spaced-out woman whoring her way to madness ("Birdcage Inn"); symbiotic love-hate between local flotsam and military ("Address Unknown"); and even characters venting their frustrations on live fish ("The Isle").
However, in "Coast Guard" Kim channels these regular obsessions into a political statement that's timely: That the military has less to fear except fear itself, and that the paranoia that justifies its existence is partly unthinking and self-manufactured. Kang is the ultimate symbol of that paranoia and, as a final scene fleetingly hints, only when he's expunged from the system can artificial divisions start to be mended.
At its heart, pic is a simple one with a simple message, and as a result its central section, with Kang lurking around the military outpost and berating his former colleagues, starts to become repetitive, with nothing new brought to the table. Also, though there are moments of stark visual poetry that recall "The Isle" (to a slow lullaby by composer Jang Yeong-gyu), the picture as a whole keeps the histrionics meter on high, which is unlikely to win the helmer many new devotees.
Still, Jang Dong-geon is superb as Kang, dominating the screen in an intensely physical performance even when his character is going round in ever-decreasing circles. Other perfs are basically decoration on the cake, with Park okay as the mad Mi-yeong and Yu suitably bleak-faced as her vengeful bro.
Technical credits are smooth throughout, with art director Yun Ju-hun's shoreline folly of fencing and barb wire a satirical joke all itself. Lensing shows a return to the clean, rather bleak look of Kim's earlier films, without any of the rich melancholy of "Bad Guy." A shuttered effect in scenes of physical violence is over-used. |
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匿名
发表于 2004-8-29 13:59
