The latest of a raft of fascinating South Korean films is perhaps the most controversial yet. Given how wild some of these movies have been, from the over-the-top weirdness of “Save the Green Planet” to the mind-blowing revenge fantasy of “Old Boy,” this is really saying something.
“The President’s Last Bang” looks at the final cataclysm in the presidency of Park Chung-Hee, who ruled South Korea for an iron-fisted couple of decades until his death in 1979. Director Im Sangsoo takes a gory, visceral attack on this material, focusing on the evening of Park’s assassination.
According to the film, it was just another night for the president: booze and food with his staff, plenty of butt-kissing flattery, and special attention from two young women brought in for the evening’s pleasure. Park himself (played by Jae-ho Song) is complacent and goatish, and not the slightest bit aware that members of his staff might be contemplating a coup.
The head plotter is the Korean CIA chief (Baek Yun-Shik), a man whose frustration with the debauched president is at the boiling point. The movie doesn’t spell out the motivations for him or his conspirators. On the one hand he talks about bringing true democracy back to South Korea (Park has a diatribe about global democracies, although it’s a given that Korea’s electoral opposition is token), but on the other hand the assassin is peeved about being bullied by other cabinet members.
Also on the premises and ready for gunplay is the CIA director’s younger sidekick (Han Suk-kyu), whose cool style makes him nicely cut out for an action hero. He’s conflicted, though, as the coup will pit him against bodyguards and agents who are his friends.
Some of this was too much for Korean censors, who insisted a few minutes (apparently documentary footage) be cut. The filmmakers have noted this and left black film in place of the deleted footage, as a kind of silent protest.
| Crackling: A depiction of the 1979 assassination of South Korean president Park Chung-Hee, rendered with blood and sardonic humor. (In Korean, with English subtitles.)
Rated: Not rated; probably R for violence, nudity Now showing: Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., Seattle; 206-523-3935 |
Director Im builds the tension nicely, with a roving camera and some frantic hand-wringing amongst the plotters. When the carnage begins, it’s a massacre of Tarantino-like proportions.
The events depicted will presumably have more immediate force with Korean audiences, who know well the facts of the assassination. But even without that level of cultural knowledge, it’s a crackling film, cleanly and brutally staged.
The heroes (or anti-heroes) are conflicted in a complex way, and the spectacle of the president’s childlike demeanor is hilarious: He nuzzles a floozy as he gets sentimental over a pop song. The inner halls of power and the threat of the sudden coup d’etat has been a rich subject since the Greeks invented drama, and “The President’s Last Bang” updates the topic in a bloody modern way.
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