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2009 Lost Memories unfolds from an intriguing premise: what if An Jung-geun had failed to assassinate Ito Hirobumi in Harbin, 1909, and this single incident opened an alternative historical path -- in which Japan had never lost the Second World War, Korea had never gained independence, and still remains Japan's colony as of 2009? Based on a novel by Bok Geo-il (who sued the production companies to have his name removed from credits), the film proved a hit with moviegoers, although its expensive production cost (estimated at more than 6 million dollars) made it less profitable than more cheaply made The Way Home and Marrying the Mafia.

The idea behind the project gets high marks for innovation and daring. It is extremely rare for Korean cinema to tackle subjects even half-heartedly science fictional, much less such hot-potato topics as the impact of Japanese colonization on Korean history. Sure, I can find numerous faults with the movie's narrative logic, historical authenticity and production details ("Furei senjin," a real historical term, is never spelled correctly; All Japanese women in this movie look and behave in the way middle-aged Korean men would like to think of them, i.e. kimono-clad, utterly subservient housewives, already stock figures in early twentieth century Japan; Jang Dong-gun's Saigo shoots his erstwhile colleague dead, seemingly having figured out the latter's betrayal through telepathy; to name only a few problems), but all these can be called minor caveats. Neither do I feel like taking the movie to task for toeing the hoary Koreans-not-Japanese- should-conquer-the-world- nationalist line. (Is it just me who thinks that the movie's vision of the utopian "unified Korea" looks suspiciously like North Korea's "paradise on earth"?) After all, one can argue that Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury also presents gross, Sinocentric stereotypes of Japanese. Finally, I am willing to ignore the film's failure to satisfactorily resolve the time-travel paradox in its frankly ludicrous ending.

All these problems could have been forgiven, if only the movie itself was entertaining. Before seeing it, I expected Lost Memories to be one of those overproduced quasi-Hollywood blockbusters: the kind of movie you are slightly ashamed of admitting that you enjoyed it -- crass, maybe, but fun.

What I ended up with was anything but: a lugubrious, turgid "epic," wallowing in its own sense of teeth-rattling pseudo-profundity. Its idea of "action" is having people running back and forth in flat, boring setups, firing tons of bullets from submachine guns at each other, and showing in gory details their bodies being punched full of bloody holes. Jang Dong-gun, obviously speaking his Japanese dialogue phonetically, and Nakamura Toru, as two male leads, acquit themselves through sheer star charisma, even though their characters are not much more than Action Movie Types: you know these men have never sneezed or cracked a joke once in their lives. Director Lee Si-myong, obviously a sincere fan of John Woo, rigorously copies the Hong Kong-born auteurs's worst traits -- his aggressively macho sentimentality and lack of restraint, to cite two examples -- without having learned a shred of the latter's wit or visual poetry. In one sequence, a little boy is brutally killed by gunfire, and his mid-air "balletic" death throes are cross-cut with shots of another child running into her father's embrace, all shown in agonizing slow motion. Scenes like this remind me, instead of the romanticized violence in a John Woo film, of an old propaganda TV drama in which North Korean Communist guerrillas mow down Commie-hating South Korean children in, what else, excruciating slow motion. (Can a Korean director ever make an action movie without using slow motion cinematography? Every second or third gong-dang scene in Lost Memories winds down to a crawl, in some cases totally trivializing whatever it is that the scene tries to convey, in other cases compromising perfectly fine effects shots or performances. I wouldn't have been surprised if the movie showed Jang Dong-gun chewing sushi in slow motion)

Lost Memories picks up its pace only when there are some explosions, light shows or other excuses for CGI effects. The "time gate" sequence, while not original in conception, is nicely done and is a refreshing contrast to all the preceding action set pieces. The best sequence in the entire movie is in fact the credit-sequence montage, in which an alternative history of the flourishing Japanese colonial empire is told with a series of ingeniously doctored stills, Forrest Gump-style, a minor triumph for the CGI and editing staff. Only if the movie could live up to one third of the expectations set up by this introduction.

The kindest thing I can say about 2009 Lost Memories is that it was a nice try. I sincerely hope that there will be another Korean film that explores the possibilities of counter-factual history or science fiction with more imagination and ingenuity -- without John Woo's living spirit breathing down its neck -- in slow motion.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

(Trailer: 300k)

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