2009: Lost Memories

In an alternate time-line, in the near future(with some nifty tech), a young cop finds himself questioning why he and his men are fighting a group of... well, are they terrorists or are they freedom fighters? The story-line is nice and does get resolved, if there are subplots and events that either don't affect anything or, at least to me with my Western eyes, looked strange and unexplained. Maybe it would help if I knew more about Korea, because this is definitely a jingoistic piece on there, from there. Japan has taken over the aforementioned country, and is suppressing their independence. This leads to some melodrama, and though the two hour, 14 minute running time sans credits would be shorter if these instances were mercifully removed, this does really get to you, you find yourself caring and feeling the impact of bullets, and the grip of tension. The acting is pretty good. I watched this with subtitles, not dubbed, and while I had to read along to understand what they were saying, the power of the way they deliver the lines came through quite clearly. The action is all shoot-outs, it's quite well-choreographed, it's stylized(with slow-motion, and "frame-chopping") and it's cool. This has some well-done visuals. The FX are reasonable. There is a lot of bloody violence in this. The DVD comes with 8 and a half minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and four trailers. I recommend this to fans of Asian cinema, and John Woo type flicks. 7/10

LOST MEMORIES is the second South Korean time travel movie I have seen. I don't know if there has been others, but I'm only familiar with this one and the romance IL MARE.

Time travel movies are risky, and the plot invariably gets badly convoluted in an attempt to explain everything. Some films just ignore explanations, but the good ones take the chance. LOST MEMORIES uses a more "parallel world" angle, but it's still all about time travel.

Don't let the South Korea/Japan collaboration fool you. The film is all South Korean, with nearly every single Japanese character coming across as incredibly evil. Cartoonishly so, in fact. If not for this, I would have given LOST MEMORIES a better grade. AS it stands, it's just too cartoonish, too crude, and too loud for its own good. Also, the music is quite terrible.

The best part of the film is the leading male, who seems to be channeling Chow Yun Fat. An incredible starring turn, and I look forward to seeing him in other movies.

6 out of 10.

An interesting opening and superb ending make up for a few less than stellar plot transitions as Lost Memories is one Action Drama that I won't soon forget. The music really complements this film and allows the slow motion sequences to make an impact. As for action its fairly standard and the acting is good but not award caliber. A solid Action drama with a few brief Science Fiction moments. Mixing Both Japanese (mostly the first half) and Korean the rest of the way, Lost Memories2009 is amongst a growing wave of multicultural/national Pan Asian films that could find an audience outside of Asia with a bit more exposure.

If a 100 is Perfect 81/100

This movie is the newest success of the rising Korean film industry. It's got drama, plot, action, emotions, and nice acting all rolled into one, on the background of a fantastical assumption on a twist of real history.

Note on the title. The setting is the year 2009, and the film is based on the assumption that Korea is still a colony of Japan, as it had been for the past 100 years, because a single assassination attempt back in 1909, which succeeded in real life, failed and changed the whole course of history for the past 100 years in this alternative story. A Korean-born special agent tries to set the history right, and his colleague, a Japanese-born and a friend of his, tries to stop him.

Although made in Korea, dialogues are about 70% Japanese, and you have to have some knowledge in the history of the two countries to fully understand this movie, but the setting and basis is very imaginative and fascinating, that anybody can appreciate it. The two stars of the movie, Dong-Kun Jang and Toru Nakamura, who are Korean and Japanese in real life, are very fine, and make up a nice team. The action scenes, which are plenty in this movie, are nicely choreographed and serve to contribute to the story. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The Korean film industry is growing, so the next time you catch a Korean movie, it could be this one!

2009 LOST MEMORIES (2002): Fantastic action thriller set in an deliberately-created alternate future in which Korea is just another Japanese state, and Koreans have largely lost their identity. A Korean-blooded, Japanese-named cop slowly realizes that the terrorists he's paid to wipe out are actually Korean freedom-fighters trying to restore the timeline to its proper state.

This film gets slagged nearly everywhere, so I defend it whenever possible. It's a big, loud, arguably overblown "blockbuster" that deals with a very sensitive subject: Korean identity. People have, I believe, unfairly examined and criticized this film on two fronts:

one, it's inherent patriotism, which is an element of Korean cinema that seems to alienate so many non-Korean viewers and yet is a fundamental part of the culture, probably more so than in any other Asian country (let alone much of the world). And two, the historical events behind its "science fiction," which nearly everybody I've read gets wrong. The key plot device of the film is NOT simply that Japan won World War II, but that the legendary Korean patriot Ahn Chung-gun FAILED in his assassination of Japanese foreign minister Ito Hirobumi in China in 1909 (thus, sort of, the point of the title being 100 years later). This single event is extremely important to the Korean culture and not only is their a gigantic memorial named after Ahn, but also a form of Tae Kwon Do. Looking these two names up on the internet greatly aids in understanding the deeper messages this film offers. I give it a 9.