Green Fish

Lee Chang-dong's debut film reflects a changing Korea, one where apartment high rises have sprung up in the outskirts of Seoul while a young man has been away for his compulsory military service. He's as powerless to stop it as he is to stop the assault of woman on the train he comes in on, and that's one of the themes here, powerlessness coming along with the loss of innocence in a Korea that dehumanizes as it modernizes. He can't get a decent job and he can't stop his family from devolving into chaos, with one brother drinking too much. He's soon sucked in to a gang with a rigid power structure, more than once having to just stand there and take physical punishment, though we see that even "big brother" has a "big brother," making one wonder where the hierarchy ends. The film is well made and almost certainly more meaningful to Koreans in the late 90's, but to me it was dreary and uninspiring, with too much emphasis on the gangster element, even if it was nice to see Song Kang-ho in just his second film. I could have done without the chicken beheading though.