Luck-Key

This review may contain spoilers!

This is a pretty bizarre comedy but it's charismatic narrative and stellar cast make it really enjoyable. I would give Luck-Key a 6/10.

The ultimate idea of this film is the whole 'switched identities' narrative done a bit more uniquely; basically one of the characters is a hitman and the other a struggling actor. What makes the film so unique is how the central actor (who was once a hitman) manages to construct a life for himself all around his lost memory, it develops to be quite a charming story about finding happiness in life. The cinematography shows a great attention paid to framing, Korean comedies are leagues ahead of American ones. The music for the film is great and really lightens up the tone, moments of joy are really backed up by the score.

Yu Hae-Jin, who played Hyung-Wook, was an excellent protagonist in this film; I loved his development after he lost his memory and I also thought the whole plot element of him having to play a 'bad' actor was fun. Sung Byoung-Sook, who played Ri-Na's Mom, was an entertaining minor role; I liked her opposition to Hae-Jin at first and how that quickly gave way to earnest praise.

However the best performance came from Jo Yoon-Hee, who played Ri-Na. Yoon-Hee delivers a passionate performance in which we see how much her character cares about the welfare of others, in particular Hae-Jin's character. The chemistry between these two is well developed and it's Yoon-Hee who often leads the relationship along. She is a funny, subtle performer and does very well in this film.

This film has a major issue in that one of it's two leads attempts to take his own life at the start of the film; suicide does not have any real place in a comedy film and the fact that it's being made a mockery of in this really switches you off the story for the first twenty minutes. Furthermore when Hyung-Wook gets his memories back you lose a lot of the build up that has been the nice charismatic life he has lead, it undercuts itself in a very disappointing way. The editing tends to be quite slow as well, resulting in pacing issues and shots being lingered upon for far too long.

Lee Joon, who played Jae-Sung, was a horrible lead and wasn't very funny at all; Joon's inability to carry his own storyline made him rather uninteresting. Lim Ji-Yeon, who played Eun-Joo, didn't really have much screen presence in this film; Ji-Yeon lacked chemistry with Joon which meant their entire story arc fell flat.