[Dachimawa Lee]

The film Dachimawa Lee (2008), directed by Ryoo Seung-wan, which is an action, comedy movie that depicts the life of a Korean spy, Dachimawa Lee. Due to the main character’s occupation as a spy, the setting took place in various countries, some of which included Korea, Manchuria, and Switzerland. I have to admit that this film is interesting in a number of ways.  

First of all, the genre of the film grabbed my attention. What about the genre? Unlike other action films, in which the protagonist is portrayed as a smart and attractive person, Dachimawa Lee seemed to be different from this typical description. In fact, when he is constantly praised for his “good looks”, it adds to the comedic element of the film. Moreover, the zaininess of Dachimawa Lee corresponds to Sianne Ngai’s description, as being “constantly in motion and in flight from precarious situations” (Ngai, 182) He is always fighting against more than one enemy, and also gets in an accident which leads to amnesia (**doesn’t this seem familiar). The scenes where he trains himself to recover are also ‘zany’, and his actions in the scenes intensify the comedic moments in the film. In addition, I believed that the use of “fake Japanese” and “fake Korean” was Ryoo’s intention to bring up more comic scenes throughout the film. In addition, there was much wordplay in Korean which is why most Korean students were laughing during the screening. In such scenes, I wondered if any non-Korean speaking students felt cheated since they were not given any hints that the whole “foreign language conversation” was a complete nonsense.

Although I introduced the film to be an action-comedy piece, I could not help but notice that there were couple of scenes that resembled the style of Music Videos. The abrupt emergence of the soundtrack and the cheesy lines that are exchanged between the male and female characters are similar to typical K-Pop MV. The only time I have come across with Ryoo’s work was the MV (Ballerino, 리쌍). What could have been Ryoo’s intention to specifically apply MV-like moments?

Furthermore, the voice of each actor sounded like a dubbing of voice actors; this made the movie seem less “contemporary” (like that of the 50s-60s).  Perhaps that is why I felt less awkward when seeing over-exaggerated expressions of the actors.

Overall, I think this film was fun to watch, and it differed from the other films that were shown in the class so far. I am looking forward to hear/read about what others have to say about this movie.