[Dachimawa Lee]

Directed by Ryoo Seung-wan, the film Dachimawa Lee is a spy-action spoof of ‘60s and 70’s Korean cinema. With the exaggerated acting, crazed martial arts action and post-production dubbing, it unfolds its story as the titular superspy called Dachimawa Lee attempts to retrieve a golden Buddha statue containing the identities of a network of Korean resistance fighters. Although it’s set during WWII when the occupied nations formed their own resistance to this invading Japanese force, director Ryoo did not make any incident serious but rather comedic. It was interesting to see how their overexaggerated face expression and gestures made the characters too cartoonish and artificial. When Dachimawa lost his memory and was staying with the somewhat weird girl during a long central section in Manchuria, it reminded me of “The Good the Bad and the Weird” in the sense that there were obvious references to the western films like Indiana Johns or Mission Impossible. This film however not only incorporated western culture but it also briefly showed international cultures, as Dachimawa fit from Tokyo to Shanhai, from the U.S. to Manchuria, and finally to Switzerland. Dachimawa was not a complex character, but he was rather portrayed as the perfect legendary spy who was completely flawless. All the female characters were depicted to be deeply struck by his extremely attractive appearance throughout the movie. Ngai identifies that the zany character is able to take on the multitude of roles, and to transfer one to another with the frenetic speed. Here, Dachimaway fits in to this category of ‘zany’ characters since he is created to be handsome, strong, multi-lingual and etc. Unlike other mainstream films that record realistic dialogue, Dachimawa Lee relied on post-production recording, which resulted in intentionally unnatural dialogue. However, considering that the zaniness is an aesthetic of action, I was a little confused as to whether I should react to this display of zaniness with humor or concern.