Chave da Sorte

I'm a sucker for South Korean movies and this was such a gem to watch. I don't usually do the switcheroo/body swap movies but I'm so glad I watched this.

The running joke that the assassin, Hyung-Wook was 32 years old cracked me up every single time. It never got old. His succeeding at acting and his attempts at smiling was gold. Too many great scenes for me to list but I never wanted a hired killer to succeed so much. Some of the parts with Jae-Sung did drag a bit but this comedy as a whole was enough to overcome it.

It's a must watch.

The 'Body Switch' genre in which two very different characters swap identities is very common in American cinema. If you aren't familiar then think of any film from the eighties, where Tom Hanks played an adult with the mind of a teenager in Big. Or Freaky Friday, The Parent Trap, 17 Again…

It seems that South Korean directors love the genre too. So much so that there has been a spate of films where a character takes on the physical identity of someone else, for comic or dramatic effect. (Some recent examples: The Beauty Inside (2015), Masquerade (2012), and Miss Granny (2014). This was pointed out during the recent Korean Cinema conference. My guess is that in a society based on strict Confucian rules, individuality is not desired, so people long to escape these narrow confines and to be someone else. So when a down and out actor takes a suave hit-man's locker key in a bath-house, we're all set for a hilarious comedy where the lives are reversed: the loser (Jaesing) becomes the hit-man and the hit-man (Hyung-wook) starts living the life of the struggling actor who is behind with the rent on his sad-sack loft apartment.

After waking up from his concussion, Hyung-wook is too poor to pay for his medical treatment and has to borrow money from the kindly Rina (Yun-hie Jo), who works as a TV agent. He moves into Jaesing's trash filled apartment. Meanwhile, newly rich Jaesing soon pays off his debts and lives the high life in a luxury penthouse where he discovers a stash of weapons as well as a surveillance camera which is fixed 24 hours on an attractive woman in the apartment above.

The hit man soon endears himself to Rina and her family, and when he starts working at her mother's snack bar he wows the customers with his astonishing knife play. What's funny here is that the tough guy can't understand where he picked up these skills, or how he is able to put his new neighbour in a headlock and throw him to the ground when he tries to start a fight. Whenever someone asks his age he can't keep a straight face, because he looks so much older. Haejin has a wonderfully expressive face: whenever he is told to smile he looks as though he is about to dispatch his next victim.

When he discovers that Jae-sing is an actor (usually as an extra in TV melodramas), he goes to the set and soon impresses the director with his realistic fighting ability. He becomes better at acting than his predecessor, moving from one-line parts to becoming the lead in a corny television drama that ends each episode with ridiculous cliffhangers (if you have ever watched a Korean TV drama, you will know what I mean).

I went in to this film not knowing anything about the story or with any expectations and when I finished watching I was pleasantly surprised. With so much advance hype and spoilers being regularly leaked, its possible to watch a film with no surprises or real excitement. That's a shame, and a good reason to watch international cinema more often.

Started watching with very less expectation. Ended with recommending bunch of friends with link via Whatsapp. Really a jewel. Ignore all the crap and negative reviews. If you have not seen the original, you will love this one.

Terrific cast, direction, and writing with wonderful plot flips, themes, and perfect timing. Leokki manages to be funny, sweet, and warmly charming in one delightful film. Strongly recommended.

In a world full of doom and gloom, this was incredibly refreshing. I was not expecting to laugh or cry, but I got plenty of both.

Hard to see how anyone couldn't love this, the acting was on point, and it's human moments were heart felt and touching.

The economic polarity expressed hit home for me and had me intrigued right off the bat, and I have to say the cast suited the roles quite well. A very broad array of emotions came out of me. Great acting all around - the corniness threw me off from what I'm using to seeing out of Korea but I enjoyed the chuckles.

Korean culture has such an elegant aura. 10 stars!