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Dashiell's Flicks: |
The President's Last Bang
The aged and corrupt President Park (Song Jae-ho) is having a little party at his safe house, with a couple of nubile young women, plenty of booze, and three other guests: his chief bodyguard, chief secretary, and Korean CIA Director Kim (Baek Yun-shik). Kim, somewhat sophisticated in his looks and demeanor compared to the others, is berated at table for being too soft on the issue of student demonstrations. Their motives are ambiguous. Kim talks about freedom and democracy, and perhaps he really believes this, but one suspects that sheer hatred of Park and his chief bodyguard (a rival for power) plays a big role. In any case, the crime seems curiously unplanned, as if done on a sudden impulse, and precious little thought is given to a strategy for the aftermath. Just about everything that could go wrong, does. The picture, it should be noted, full of mayhem and gore, is not a comedy--not in the usual sense. Nevertheless one laughs from time to time--the grim kind of laughter arising from the combination of the tragic With its focus on the relentless machinations of the plotters and their opponents, The President's Last Bang lets the effect of all this on ordinary Koreans stay hidden on the margins, only illuminated slightly by the plight of the two young women at the party, a saucy friend of chief agent Ju and a guitar-playing TV pop-star, whose reactions to the night's events reflect the pain and bewilderment of those outside the circle of power. The players on the stage of national history are fatally isolated, living a false dream of control in which government has sunk to the level of organized crime, with society ultimately suffering the consequences. Im's black satire goes beyond indignation into savage anger. This is an anti-heroic slapstick suspense film; uneasy laughter revealing profound disgust.
©2006 Chris Dashiell |
The thrill in political thrillers has its source, at least partly, in allowing us a vicarious glimpse into the corridors of power. Even if the bigwigs in a movie are villains, there's usually a certain degree of awe clinging to them and the authority they wield, which lends an air of gravity and importance to the proceedings. In fact, this even holds true for most satires. But Korean director Im Sangsoo has crafted an exception to the rule: The President's Last Bang , a fictionalized account of South Korean President Park Chunghee's 1979 assassination, takes a uniquely irreverent stance towards power, deliberately smashing any tendency towards awe or grandeur we may feel. 
The President and his henchmen want the students put down with a brutal hand; the KCIA head advises caution and moderation. But behind the scenes, Kim is anything but cautious. He is planning to assassinate the President that night, letting only his stoic right-hand man Jang (Kim Sang-ho) and his chief agent Ju (Han Suk-kyu), a brash, gum-chewing young hothead who is as close as we come to a point-of-view character, into his confidence. 
and the absurdly grotesque. Im is determined to rip the veil away from power and the mystique of history, to show the ordinary baseness of human character and actions beneath. The greatest matters of state are resolved in terms of crude vanity, resentment, and self-interest. Yet he doesn't turn the characters into satiric cartoons--the behavior and dialogue seems all too real. Han shines in the difficult role of the slick, ambitious young agent Ju, who turns out to be a lot less hardened than he seems. 