At The Movies: Song Joong-ki’s gangster drama Hopeless almost lives up to its name
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Song Joong-ki (left) and Hong Xa-bin star in Hopeless, a South Korean crime drama about an abused teen who befriends a gangster.
PHOTO: GOLDEN VILLAGE
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Hopeless (NC16)
124 minutes, now showing
3 stars
The story: Teenager Yeon-gyu (Hong Xa-bin) is bullied at school and abused at home. To escape his violent stepfather and earn pocket money, he does deliveries for a noodle shop. The low-income residents of his district are familiar with Chi-geon (Song Joong-ki), a mid-level mobster with a crew that specialises in loan-sharking and theft. Teen and gangster cross paths, leading to a relationship that will change both their lives.
The first act of Hopeless is a tour de force of bleakness: Poor Yeon-gyu has a life that is all torment. Fate has given him emotional sensitivity and a keen sense of justice, but made sure he was born into poverty, to grow up surrounded by broken souls eager to drag him down to their level of cynicism.
Writer-director Kim Chang-hoon, in his debut feature, shows a mastery of scenarios that make viewers laugh even as they are bursting with pity for the miserable Yeon-gyu.
Hong plays the teen with a magnetic stillness and sense of introspection that will remind viewers of American actor Jesse Plemons (The Power Of The Dog, 2021).
Yeon-gyu’s passivity in the face of abuse – he either withdraws or curls into a foetal ball – sets up the expectation that by the final act, his wrongs will be righted in a cathartic act of violence.
Kim has no problem with gore and his camera holds steady when shocking acts of bloodshed occur (note the NC16 rating).
But, just as the film settles into a social-realist groove, Chi-geon appears.
Like Yeon-gyu, he is the product of a broken family. Unlike the teen, he has decided that the proper response to evil is to become more evil.
All well and good, but there is a problem with Song’s outsized star power. Whenever the heart-throb – best known for K-dramas like Descendants Of The Sun (2016) – appears, he is wreathed in stylised thug coolness. It screams fashion magazine shoot.
Perhaps the audience is seeing the man the way the admiring Yeon-gyu sees him, but later events seem to disprove this theory. The story, at first raw and unforgiving, softens and sags. Thankfully, it never fully collapses because of Hong’s counterbalancing authenticity.
Hot take: This tale of loan sharks, alcohol abuse and domestic violence set in a poor neighbourhood is nearly derailed by how Song’s character is handled, but Hong’s effortless realism saves it.
