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Socrates" is the first film proper from Choi
Jin Won, whose only previous credit of note was
co-directing "Memento
Mori" (the sequel to influential teen
horror "Whispering
Corridors"), and is another in the long
line of hip, stylised crime dramas which have been
pouring out of Korea over the last few years.
Sadly, this in itself may be enough to put off
many viewers, as there is no denying the fact that
the film's central premise treads familiar ground.
However, as with "A
Bittersweet Life", lurking beneath the
surface are a surprising amount of depth and a
genuinely interesting central protagonist. Of
course, it helps that the film has a slyly ironic
sense of humour, and countless scenes of people
being beaten to a pulp with steel baseball bats,
all of which contribute to what is a highly
entertaining film which deserves to stand out from
the crowd of similar efforts.
The plot follows Dong Hyuk
(Kim Rae Won, in a departure from his last role in
the romantic comedy "My Little Bride") a
common street thug who is clearly going nowhere
with his life. One night, he is kidnapped by a
group of gangsters who keep him prisoner in an
abandoned school. Here, he is put through a brutal
regime of lessons and training with one purpose in
mind -- to prepare him for the police
qualification exams. Probably as a result of
having seen too many films, the gangsters have the
brilliant idea of turning Dong Hyuk into a tame
homicide detective to help use the law for their
own benefits. Unsurprisingly, things don't go
quite to plan, as Dong Hyuk takes to his job like
a fish to water, mainly for the simple reason that
he sees being a policeman as a great excuse for
getting into fights with impunity.
Although the story is
immediately reminiscent of "Infernal
Affairs" and "Oldboy",
the film owes far more to "Public
Enemy" in that it takes a bleak and
humorous look at modern notions of justice and the
law. The film does this in a reasonable
philosophical manner, portraying the police force
and the gangsters as being similar, and depicting
both as groups who use the law only when it suits
them. Corruption is seen at every turn, with a
complete lack of honest or traditionally 'good'
characters. This moral void makes for interesting
viewing, and the constant cynicism of the
narrative, with the characters furthering their
schemes only through luck or violence, is
frequently amusing.
The film as a whole is very
funny, with the character of Dong Hyuk in
particular providing a good number of laughs. He
is an essentially symbolic figure, being a
directionless, almost idiotic thug who is forced
to learn and become a better person on the pain of
constant beatings and threats on his life. The
film's title comes into play as, once working as a
policeman, he starts quoting philosophy to some of
the people he thrashes, clearly without any
understanding of what he is saying. Dong Hyuk does
develop and grow through the film, and as such the
viewer comes to care about his fate, mainly due to
the fact that although he is undoubtedly vicious,
he has an almost admirable single-mindedness that
sets him apart from the rest of the scum.
"Mr. Socrates" is
fast moving, with plenty of action, most of it
violent, though thankfully without any needless
set pieces or the elaborately staged shoot outs
which tend to find their way into such films. This
lends the proceedings a gritty, if not entirely
believable air and makes the director's musings on
justice easier to swallow. There are flaws,
however, mainly in the unavoidable sense of
familiarity and the fact that there is little here
that has not been seen before, especially in the
anti-climatic ending which serves only to tie
together the various plot strands in a too-hurried
manner. However, the film is exciting, highly
entertaining, drawing strength from its irreverent
attitude, its likeable characters, and its desire
to delve deeper into societal themes of right and
wrong. |
