Lost Memories

This past Friday night we went to see 2009: Lost Memories [N.B.: sound, flash], a high-budget Korean action film. In it, the Japanese and US were allies in WWII, and in their triumph Japan had colonized Korea entirely and Seoul became their capitol (the movie is almost entirely in Japanese). Ethnic Koreans were a minority, but a small, militant group called the KRA (yep, Korean Republican Army) was crashing parties and killing a bunch of people, without clear motive. Enter a couple of JBI (Japanese Bureau of Investigation) agents, one ethnically Japanese and one ethincally Korean, to figure out the KRA's motives. Hundreds of thousands of bullets later, things get crazy, issues of ethnicity, family, and identity are raised, lifetime friendships are betrayed, and--time travel! Unfortunately there are also more than a few cheesy scenes, and the ending is a tad confusing in that yeah-but-if-he-travels-through-time-then-X kind of way.

I liked it, though it was flawed. It seems like it might have been a great movie if it had been shot with a smaller budget, so that we might have been spared some of the embarrassing cheesed-out parts. A remarkable number of people get shot throughout its course. All in all, a worthwhile $7.50 for an interesting plot that makes for good after-movie conversation, some nice camerawork, and an example the Asian take on the big Hollywood action/sci-fi flick.