Killers Weak To Women's Tears Bring Chuckles

[바다를품은가슴]

녀석들과.. '킬러들의 수다'를 보고..
오랜만에 정말 많이 웃었네요..
지나치게 폭력적이거나 과장적이지 않고..
굳이 억지웃음을 만들어 내려 하지 않았지만..
자연스럽게.. 아주 많이 웃게 만드는 영화였어요..

후후.. 다음 기사 말미에 기자가 쓴 것처럼..
우리나라에도 전문킬러가 있을까하고 생각하면서 극장문을 나섰는데..
기사 읽는내내 영화 장면 하나하나가 떠올라서 또 한번 웃었네요.


Killers Weak To Women's Tears Bring Chuckles

By Jang Jae-il
Staff Reporter


The Korean-language comedy-action movie ``Guns & Talks,'' directed by Chang Chin, will open Oct. 12, and bring in a lot of laughter for the Autumn season, a time when many people ponder about their lives with wishful sighs.

The film centers around four professional killers who only kill based on payment and according to the wish of the client. If the client wants someone's left hand blown off, then they do that for money, and if someone wants the person dead at the climax of an opera, then they will kill him in that fashion. Whatever the client desires.

The four actors playing the killers are Shin Hyon-jun (as Sang-young), Chong Jae-young (as Chae-young), Shin Ha-gyun (as Chong-wu) and Won Bin (as Ha-yon) and they are chased by Chong Jin-young (as prosecutor Cho). In Korea, prosecutors are involved in chasing down criminals with loaded guns, unlike in the U.S., where they simply bring a case to court for trial.

Sang Young is the leader who takes on the cases of the clients after hearing them out and discussing the method by which they want their hated ones to be killed. He is weak to female tears. He takes on the case of Oh Young-ran (starring Ko Eun-mi) who is the team's collective favorite TV announcer. They never miss her on the news, just as some never miss an episode of ``Jeopardy,'' but they hardly listen to what she says, as they are more involved in admiring her form and face.

Chae-young is the sniper, Chong-wu is the bomb expert and Ha is the computer and blueprint whiz kid. He is the youngest of the four and dreams of becoming a genuine killer like his compatriots and his blood brother Sang. Together they make a rather professional, but totally spaced out team of killers.

Oh was jilted in love and she asks Sang to kill a famous actor on stage, in front of the watching spectators. He finds the plea difficult, especially with prosecutor Cho breathing down on his back, but when she cries, he accepts the offer.

Chong-wu is also not indifferent to female tears. He falls in love with his female target when he catches her crying in a car. His repeated attempts to kill her ends up in the two of them doing a slow dance to soft music.

Ha-yon becomes pals with an elementary school girl who is jealous of her English teacher falling in love with another woman and wants him dead. When she cries in front of him and bares her heart in fluent English, Ha doesn't understand a word, but is moved by her tears into tears of his own, and says that he will kill her English teacher for her. This never happens, but the girl becomes part of the happy killer family.

Chae-young is perhaps the coolest of these professional killers, but when he hears that his favorite announcer Oh actually shed tears when she persuaded Sang to take on her case, he decides that the man who hurt her should die by his sniper rifle. The movie has great guns and bombs like a James Bond movie, because they have a professional arms maker furnishing any type of weaponry for them.

Throughout the movie, the audience wonders about the intelligence quotient of these very accurate killers, as they are all quite flaky, and especially Sang, who is the most far out. The fact that he grows a beard and moustache makes him look all the more silly. But they certainly earn their living through their hits.

Maybe they are like some soldiers during wartime who can become rather simple, when it comes to matters of the heart, in the middle of a hail of bullets.

Prosecutor Cho is also infected by the silliness of these killer characters. He tries to talk to the pregnant woman whom Chong-wu falls in love with, and finds out that the father wants her dead because of her baby. She asks him to ask the father not to kill her child, which he actually does. Sang also meets the father and refuses to take on his case.

Naturally, it took more than words to make the bad father to rescind the order and hear out the private request of a public prosecutor. This is not what professional killers do or for that matter a public prosecutor does. In such ways, the acting by these five characters cause gentle ways of bringing smiles and laughter to the spectators.

The humor strikes the audience too, when Chong-wu meticulously installs a bomb above a target's office ceiling, and calls the target from a street liquor cart, saying in an inquisitive voice, ``I am the guy who installed a bomb in your office. Has it detonated yet?'' and the target says, ``Say What?'' Boom!

However, since the humor is mainly transported to the spectators through funny lines accompanied by head-slapping idiocy, non-Korean-speaking viewers might have trouble understanding the humor without subtitles. This is a movie that very much caters to locals.

The underlying theme of the movie is ``Why do people hate other people so much as to want them dead?'' But, as long as people do, killers will be around as a necessary recourse to fulfill their wishes.

Prosecutor Cho put it right when he said to Sang, who marched into his office to surrender, ``I will starve you to death.'' Hopefully, a day might come when all professional hit men in Korea will become jobless. By the way, does Korea actually have professional killers who are freelancing? The audience should find out for themselves if they really hate somebody enough to have them killed.


paradise@koreatimes.co.kr