or Obaltan
or Aimless Bullet
starring Kim Jin-kyu, Choi Mu-ryong
directed by Yu Hyun-mok
110 minutes
in Korean with English subtitles
Cheol-ho (Kim Jin-kyu) and Yeong-ho (Choi Mu-ryong), brothers, struggle to make ends meet, in the aftermath of the Korean War. Cheol-ho is married and has children. He works as an accountant but earns a meager salary. He doesn't have enough to go to the dentists when he has a toothache, buy his children the clothes they need or feed them properly. His 10-yea-old son has taken to selling newspapers on the street.
Yeong-ho is unemployed and unmarried. He spends most of his time hanging out with friends with whom he served in the army during the war. He gets a job offer to be in a movie but turns it down in disgust when he finds out that they are mostly interested in him because he's a wounded veteran which is the role he would be playing in the movie.
Myeong-sook, sister of Cheol-ho and Yeong-jo, works as a prostitute, selling her services to American soldiers. She was interested in marrying one of Yeong-ho's friends. They were an item before the war but he came back crippled and doesn't want to imagine what their married life would be like.
Thoughts
I saw this movie as part of the 2024 edition of the Noir City DC film festival. It was introduced by Forster Hirsch. This movie was the back half of a double feature. The front half was They Made Me a Fugitive (1947). The thread that connects the two is that they are both set in the immediate aftermath of war and deal with its impact on people of limited means.
There is a lot more to this story than I described above. It was not an easy watch. It is tragic. Writing about it now brings back some of the emotions I felt while watching the movie.
It is not an action packed movie but I thought it was extremely good. It is tragic and dramatic at times but it is also kind of understated at other time. Definitely worth a watch if you like foreign films.
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