With Eyes East

Baby Assassins: 3 Babies

No, really, though. Recently, I re-subscribed to Hi-Yah! on Amazon to watch Corey Yuen’s She Shoots Straight, off Donovan’s sterling recommendation. Great movie. Classic girl-forward Yuen but before his CGI fixation with So Close and DOA. I was browsing around at what else I could watch to justify the subscription for the month and noticed not only Baby Assassins but Baby Assassins 2. Oh, right! Yes, I’ve been meaning to get into those movies ever since it was only “that movie.” And now, as I discover, there are three? And a TV series? Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the third film, Baby Assassins: Nice Days, is not yet streaming on Hi-Yah!, nor is the series Baby Assassins: Everyday. They only premiered last year. Had I been in on the ground floor, I would’ve at least been able to watch Everyday on Dailymotion, but now I can’t find anything – and am devastated.

I tell you, man, I’m obsessed. Baby Assassins is totally the new Zeiram for me, this thing that I can’t stop thinking about but is too small to really think anything? But here’s something I noticed. Of course, in America, the title has been localized as “Baby Assassins,” with this logo:

In the original Japanese, however, it’s more like “Beibî warukyûre,” or “Baby Valkyries,” and this logo:

Notice how in the English version, there’s a visual contrast between “baby” and “assassin,” but none in the Japanese. My review for the first movie was informed by the assumption that there was something ironic about the premise, that the comedy would come from the two characters being young women. I’m wondering now if that was ever a factor, especially after the sequel, where we had a pair of young male assassins who were not so developmentally arrested. Anyway, here’s a GIF I made:

It’s All Fun and Games…

Over the weekend, I spent time some time with the family, and my parents and I watched season two of Squid Game, hereinafter referred to as its apparent title Squid Game 2. I doubt I have anything unique to contribute, and all of my reactions were reflected on the Wikipedia page’s “reception” tab: repetitive with the voting, Lee Jung-jae’s good but muted performance, all that. I didn’t have much of an issue with the “cliffhanger ending,” which was more like a season that stopped halfway through, because I already knew that’s exactly what it was. I do just want to highlight that, wow, this is a stacked cast – and I’d expect nothing less from the follow-up to the biggest thing ever.

First of all, I was pleased as punch to see Jeon Seok-ho, a favorite from Kingdom who I just saw in Love Next Door. That guy is so funny, and is basically charged with providing the levity to balance out the first two episodes especially. Of course, his involvement in the “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Minus One” game made the outcome predictable, though I did like that the loan shark from the first season came back as a more sympathetic character. Sympathetic to Gi-hun, at least, which is kind of a subtle commentary on the power of money. To that, there’s also Gong Yoo, who’s taken his Recruiter character from mysteriously banal to absolutely batshit – and still somehow extremely sexy.

I was genuinely surprised to see Oh Dal-su, because I know he’d had some legal troubles in the recent past, but I think director Hwang Dong-hyuk isn’t super interested in playing by the hardcore social norms, also casting idol T.O.P as the drug enthusiast Thanos despite a real-life history with drugs – a major no-no in South Korea. And then of course, there’s Lee Jung-jae, already a massive star before Squid Game, and Lee Byung-hun, arguably the most famous Korean star, period. I always wonder, at the end of the first season when the Front Man removes his mask, did American audiences make the connection to Storm Shadow and Red and all those mediocre action movies he did in the 2010s? Terminator: Genisys anyone? No…

Without a doubt, the highlight was Park Sung-hoon as trans woman Cho Hyun-ju. I think it’s a very basic depiction, but she’s the heart of the show in such a ruthless, heartless world. And when Young-mi first calls her “unnie,” I just about cried. What got me the most was her final moment of the season, when she’s about to fire on the incoming pink guards and Geum-ja tells her not to. I think there were more moments like that throughout the season, especially with Geum-ja and Yong-sik, than in the first, but nothing on the level of, say, that famous shot of Jung Ho-hyeon or Ali’s betrayal. I assume that’s coming later, and hopefully I’ll be ready by then.

I had to rewatch this scene to pull the screenshot and that was extremely difficult

Great stuff, just as nerve-racking as ever. I was surprised by how consistent it felt with the first season, despite the introduction of weird crash zooms into the film language. 2024 Squid Game acquits itself in basically the same manner as its 2021 counterpart, with the same economic but effective characterization, the same plot beats (organ harvesting, an investigation, a bad guy as player 001) and even the same flaws. After the glass bridge explodes in the first season, the pacing kind of sputters out, especially in the prolonged epilogue, with a twist that undermines a significant amount of pathos. Here, the bad pacing is at least better paced.

In Squid Game 2, the players are allowed to vote after each game, which is interesting thematically but ruinous dramatically. Lots of back-and-forth, rehashing the same arguments. That said, when part of that argument is a player shouting “Not enough people have died!” and it feels totally natural – logical, even – I’d say Mr. Hwang has once again captured the global moment, this time pertaining to apathy. I may not be his biggest fan, having failed to finish both Silenced and The Fortress, but I think he’s one of the most humane, empathetic directors around.

Kung Fu is More Manly than the Men!

To round things off here, I finally saw the classic Japanese movie House. If you haven’t heard of it and therefore haven’t been frantically urged to watch it, I frantically urge you watch it (you can’t see, but I’m waving my arms all crazy). This is a haunted house movie by a wildman director who came from the world of gonzo commercials, and House is indeed best described as a series of insane 30-second intervals rather than a conventional horror movie. Like Being John Malkovich, which also has a strange plot, the film starts being strange immediately, long before the actual supernatural elements are introduced. For example, all the characters have names like “Gorgeous,” “Fantasy,” “Sweet,” and everyone’s favorite, “Kung Fu.” When our ostensible lead Gorgeous returns home, she talks with her dad on the balcony which, well, looks like this:

Anyway, I got the word “gorgeous” stuck in my head, leading me in a roundabout way back to Shu Qi. I didn’t watch So Close again, though, I went with My Wife is a Gangster 3. It’s admittedly a pretty bad movie, but I love it!