B-movie version of James Bond and the Definition of Dachimawa-Lee

The South Korean film Dachimawa Lee, directed by Ryoo Seung-Wan, is somewhat of a parody of the whole Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise.  One of the first things that give me a sense of cheapness to this film is the inaccurate depiction of other languages and culture.  The first obvious examples are the Japanese officials who are basically represented very poorly, with the characters speaking Japanese with a heavy accent and horrible sentence structure along with poor vocabulary.  The same could be applied with English in one particular scene where Dachimawa Lee arrives at Princeton University with a series of dialogue going on in a comparably better English yet the content makes you think of sentences brought from an English textbook in an East Asian high school (eg.  This is a pen). 

The film also mixes Hong Kong-style martial arts features and camera works in a spy agent narrative.  This is particularly obvious in the scenes after the protagonist temporarily loses his memory, in which he trains to use a different weapon based on a scripture left by the father of the girl who rescues him.  This shares a resemblance to last week’s film The Good, the Bad, the Weird, where its spaghetti western narrative also incorporates similar camera work seen in martial arts film.  The basic underlying motive of the protagonist, Dachimawa Lee, is national justice where focus is put on the pursuit of moral values in the context of nationalism.  This could be compared to the traditional cowboy western movies where characters are driven by a sense of moral values which is quite the opposite of the characters in The Good, the Bad, the Weird, who all acts based on their own interests.   The action scenes seen in Dachimawa Lee are more ridiculous than impressive adding more to the sense of cheapness seen in B-grade movies. 

One last thing to note is the term “Dachimawa-Lee” itself.  According to the Asian Wiki, apparently it is a Korean idiom used within the film industry to refer to “thrilling action”.  Since I was unable to find a credible reference to the translation, the definition might actually be inaccurate, however, there is a term in Japanese which shares a very similar pronunciation tachimawari (立ち回り).  The term has multiples definition including how it is used to refer to the choreography of fighting scenes or the fight itself involving punching and grabbing.  But the most basic definition I see the term used more commonly is how an individual deals with a situation or conflict by taking actions that lead them to gain an upper hand.  I don’t know if it was coincidence or whether the term shares a similar etymology, but the term funny enough explains the basic premise of the film – how Dachimawa Lee deals with the situation and conflicts he faces throughout the film. 

Lenin Amaya