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is about 30-odd minutes in the third act of "She's on Duty" that would
have made a great cop film. Everything is there: raw emotion, conflicted themes
of loyalty and duty, and spirited fisticuffs thrown with meaning. Alas,
"She's on Duty" is your usual mish mash of Korean Jopok (gangster)
action-comedy, with a healthy dose of slapstick mixed in with hardcore violence
-- two of the genre's trademarks. When it's not showing undercover cop Jae-in
(Seon-a Kim) trying desperately to cheat on an exam by having her fellow cops
give her the answers through a two-way receiver, the film's villainous gangster
is sticking butcher knives in people's guts only to revive them again by means
of blood transfusion so he can prolong the torture. Yep, it's that kind of
movie.
"She's on Duty" stars the affable
Seon-a Kim (who was without a doubt the best part of the overblown
Korean sci-fi film "Yesterday")
as Jae-in, an undercover cop in her early '20s. When we first meet
her, Jae-in is posing as a schoolgirl to bust some Japanese white
slavers. Besides being an introduction to the seemingly super
abilities of our heroine (she's endowed with the power of wire-fu!),
this prelude also allows the filmmakers to indulge in some gratuitous
rah-rah nationalism concerning a certain group of islands. Later,
Jae-in is ordered to infiltrate a high school as a transfer student,
cozy up to the withdrawn Seung-hee (Sang-mi Nam), and wait for the
girl's on-the-lam gangster father to contact her. The police needs
Seung-hee's father to testify against the boss of his former gang, and
Seung-hee is their only link.
Played mostly for laughs in its first hour and
change, "She's on Duty" works surprisingly well, if only
because Seon-a Kim is terribly appealing as the foul-mouthed cop with
the hot temper. Then again, who could blame her for getting so
exasperated? The school is filled with equally foul mouthed and
violent girls and Jae-in's police backup makes the Three Stooges look
like Einsteins by comparison. There are other obstacles for Jae-in,
most of all the stoic Seung-hee, who has closed herself off from the
world, and it takes an out-of-the-blue rumor about Jae-in to get
Seung-hee to finally open up.
In-between getting into trouble, avoiding
trouble, and getting into more trouble anyway, Jae-in finds herself
making doleful glances at No-young (Yu Kong), the dreamy new transfer
student who also seems to have an interest in Seung-hee. Which leads
me to this: the film doesn't really do a good job of keeping
No-young's hidden agenda, well, hidden; it's readily obvious that he's
more than he seems, and it's only a matter of waiting for his true
identity to be revealed, although you'll probably be able to guess it
much sooner than that.
If there's a reason "She's on Duty" works at
all, it's Seon-a Kim, who looks young enough to fit into the high
school environment, but also pulls off the adult portion of her
character just as well, if not better. This is especially true of the
film's third act, when "She's on Duty" locks its comedy in
the closet and pulls out the heavy melodrama for its grand finale.
Which leads us back to the beginning: there is the making of a really
good, serious cop film here, if the final 30 minutes are any
indication. The highlight of "She's on Duty's" more serious
side is an all-too-brief mano-a-mano tussle between Jae-in and
No-young on the judo mat. The short scene is filled with conflicting
emotion and intensity, and you can't help but wonder how good
"She's on Duty" could have really been had it kept the
narrative straight.
Clocking
in at around an hour and 50 minutes, "She's on Duty" is
probably about 20 minutes too long, although curiously director
Kwang-chun Park ("Soul
Guardians") unnecessarily crams about 10 minutes of very
imperative plot points into the film in a matter of about 30 seconds.
This sets the mood for the gritty conclusion, but it's also jarring to
the audience. How did it happen that the filmmakers were forced to
rush through such important details when they had over 110 minutes to
work with? The explanation seems readily obvious: the filmmakers were
selling "She's on Duty" as a comedy first and foremost.
Although nowhere as good as "My
Wife is a Gangster", which is currently the seminal
"Korean chick kicks butt" movie, "She's on Duty"
is on par with some of its fellow Jopok action-comedies such as "My
Boss, My Hero" and "Attack
on the Gas Station". There's nothing overly original to be
found here, and the over reliance on obvious wire-fu in the first two
acts is a bit of a turn off. Most of all, "She's on Duty"
benefits from a charming lead, who although not completely convincing
in the scenes where wire-fu is thankfully excised, cuts enough of a
fine figure and shows enough range in the acting chops department to
make "Duty" a worthwhile look.
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