Flashback: "Sarang"

Every so often I dig up an old review I actually still like.

posted Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:43:12 -0700

SARANG A soulful romantic melodrama embedded in a bare-knuckled gangster saga, the expert Korean entertainment Sarang ("A Love") is the kind of flagrantly unrealistic movie that makes us enjoy having our buttons pushed. Written and directed by veteran hit maker Kwak Kyung-Taek (Friend, Typhoon), it chronicles the ironic destiny of Chae In-Ho (Ju Jin-Mo), who begins as a teenage brawler on the mean streets of Pusan, morphs into a sleek mob lieutenant in slim-line dark suits and aviator shades, and from there into a windswept tragic hero: a stoic Heathcliff in an armor-plated Mercedes. But In-Ho’s rise to power is haunted by the memory of the love of his life, the impossibly dewy and beautiful Jang Mi-Ju (Park Si-Hyeon), who has a face like a flower. Tough guy In-Ho melts from the inside out and swears to devote his life to protecting Mi-Ju, and who could blame him? It could be argued that neither of the lovers ever seems jaded or damaged enough, but the fact that they drift through a series of often sordid and violent events without getting deeply scarred is what makes Sarang such an effective moony fantasy — a gorgeously packaged, artfully tousled soap with an extra measure of operatic glamour. (MPark 4) (David Chute)