Gue-mool
***½/****
starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doo-na, Ko Ah-sung
screenplay by Bong Joon-ho, Hah Joon-won, Baek Chul-hyun
directed by Bong Joon-ho
by Bill Chambers I knew I would love The Host as soon as I realized that the man in the surgical scrubs was none other than national treasure Scott Wilson, who, in his most heinous role since In Cold Blood (or maybe Shiloh), observes dust on the jars of formaldehyde in the morgue of a South Korean military base and bullies a reluctant attendant into disposing of them by dumping their contents down the sink. It's not merely that I enjoyed watching a post-Monster/Junebug Wilson complete a hat-trick, but also that, because he's an actor of such gravitas, he manages to distil all the atomic terror of Rubber Suit cinema into a single barb of Western arrogance. This is a movie that makes its points succinctly (after we've just seen dozens of Koreans devoured by a beautifully-realized giant fish monster from the Han River, the local news reports on the lone American casualty), and if The Host doesn't have very nice things to say about the U.S. influence on Eastern culture, it offers a life-affirming portrait of the Everyman, with our unlikely hero, shiftless widower Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), reminding of a moving passage from Pauline Kael's Nashville review in which she notes that the outwardly-misanthropic Haven Hamilton is the only character who acts selflessly following the climactic assassination attempt. At the risk of downplaying how funny the picture is, allow me to single out its cinematic fluency; comparisons to Spielberg's Jaws, Jurassic Park, and especially War of the Worlds are inevitable, but the homage that resonated with me is a close-up of Gang-du's young daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung), her face vertically streaked with dirt in a way that uncannily evokes Kwaidan's Hoichi the Earless. Foreshadowing in retrospect, it feels like director Bong Joon-ho's reassurance that he won't, unlike Spielberg of late, cop out. PROGRAMME: Midnight Madness
