“Clementine” Theatrical Poster
Director: Kim Doo-young
Cast: Lee Dong-jun, Steven Seagal, Kim Hye-Ri, Eun Seo-Woo, Ki Joo-Bong, Kim Jung-Tae, Lim Ho, Lim Hyeok-Pil, Simon Rhee, So-yeon Kim, Jun Won-Joo
Running Time: 100 min.
By Paul Bramhall
The likelihood is you’ve never found yourself asking if there’s a Korean version of Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, but just on the off chance that you have, then let me put forward the case for Lee Dong-jun. A three-time taekwondo world champion and regular member of the Korean national team in the 1980s, similar to Wilson he converted to acting once his competitive career had run its course, turning up in various tough guy roles to dispense precision timed kicks to the face. It would be 1996’s Charisma that arguably offered up the best opportunity for Dong-jun to show off his skills, one of many direct-to-video taekwondo gangster flicks that Korea cranked out throughout the 1990’s, and the directorial debut of Kim Doo-young.
Doo-young would only go on to direct 2 more movies after his debut, the first being 2003’s Dying or Live about a restaurant delivery driver who’s obsessed with Bruce Lee, and the second coming a year later in the form of Clementine. His final feature is noteworthy because it finally gave Dong-jun star billing in a taekwondo movie, and to top it all off, the selling point was that his main opponent would be Steven Seagal! The master of mumbling and Aikido had his final cinematic outing just a couple of years prior with 2002’s Half Past Dead, and in 2004 many were still dazed and confused as to what direction Seagal’s career was headed in (including me!). DTV seemed to be the order of the day, and while The Foreigner was unwatchable dreck, Belly of the Beast saw legendary Hong Kong director and choreographer Ching Siu-Tung at the helm. So, Steven Seagal appearing in a Korean movie? Expectations were hopeful.
Speaking of expectations, as exciting as it may sound for a former world taekwondo champion and Steven Seagal to be starring together in a Korean movie made at the height of the early – mid 00’s Korean Wave, let me temper them accordingly. Clementine very much feels like a carry over from Korea’s 90’s action output, clearly expecting machismo and kicks to the face to be competent stands ins for budget constraints and some dodgy acting, at least initially. Proceedings open with Dong-jun taking place in a competitive taekwondo match against an American for the title of taekwondo world champion. Juxtaposed with his wife giving birth to their first child, in typical Korean fashion (translated: expect zero subtlety) we need to know life is going to get tough – not only does he lose the match after being unfairly robbed of a point, but his wife dies while giving birth, leaving him to raise their daughter as a single father.
Skip forward 7 years later, and the Las Vegas based Dong-jun is given an opportunity to get out of his alcohol driven depression through an old friend in Seoul who’s become a cop, and they have an opening. Naturally, alcoholic former taekwondo champions are top of the Korea Police Force’s recruitment list, so Dong-jun heads back to Seoul and becomes like a Korean version of the Donnie Yen angry cop model. His new occupation doesn’t last long though, as his hot temper sees him fired after what seems like only a week into the job, and he finds himself with no choice but to partake in the underground fighting tournaments arranged by the very gangsters he’d arrested.
So far so DTV flick, but we should talk about the elephant in the room – Dong-jun’s daughter. Now 7 and played by Eun Seo-woo (Bunshinsaba, Phone), she’s the only one who can break through his tough exterior. The pair are close, and when it’s his birthday she even goes to the supermarket to prepare him a birthday cake. It’s in the supermarket that Seo-woo bumps into another lady, played by Kim Hye-ri (The Legend of Evil Lake, Contract Couple), who after listening to how her mother died at birth, takes Seo-woo under her wing. They share a truly bizarre exchange that takes place in a department store, that sees Seo-woo attempting to buy matching couple rings, and when Hyr-ri asks who she’s buying them for, Seo-woo goes into an impassioned spiel about how she wants to marry her father. If it’s not allowed in Korea, she’ll find a country that does allow father/daughter marriage. I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be creepy, but, it is.
However what comes next is even worse, and surely deserves an award for the most ill-advised decision to put 2 scenes next to each other. Coming home drunk Dong-jun passes out on the bed still fully clothed, to which Seo-woo insists if he’s going to fall asleep, he should at least take his pants off. We then have to watch a scene of a 7-year-old girl attempting to undo her father’s zipper for what feels like far too long. Let’s call it cultural differences. Of course one thing that is universal is fight action, and we do get a fun underground cage match that features Dong-jun along with 4 other fighters duking it out in a kind of MMA royal rumble. The funniest thing about the sequence is that it features a heap of slow-motion money shots whenever one of the fighters delivers a killer blow to another, however the camera is pulled out so wide that you can see the whole ring, leaving us to assume the other 3 fighters have teleported somewhere else.
Then, just like that, the train goes completely off the rails. What has, up until this point, been moving along as an entertaining but undemanding DTV action flick, for some unexplainable reason decides to completely jump the shark. When Dong-jun meets Hye-ri for the first time, the lady who’s taken Seo-woo under her wing, he can’t believe his eyes – it’s his wife who died at birth 7 years ago! What!? Ok, bear with me here. It’s all the mother-in-laws fault! She didn’t want her daughter to be in a relationship with a taekwondo guy, so told Dong-jun that his wife died at birth. She then told her own daughter that Dong-jun had left them, so rather than have her be a single mother, she took it on herself to give Seo-woo to an orphanage. Dong-jun then rescued her from the orphanage, raising Seo-woo himself believing Hye-ri to be dead, and Hye-ri believing that Dong-jun had abandoned them. Fight action out. Histrionics in, a lot of histrionics.
We get a custody battle, which involves a lot of crying, Seo-woo stands on top of a hill and sings Clementine, while crying, the mother-in-law confesses everything, resulting in more crying. Can they ever be a happy family again after all they’ve been through? Wasn’t this supposed to be an action movie? Did somebody say Steven Seagal!? To say that Clementine loses its way would be too kind, and it feels like an eternity passes until the bible brandishing gangster (played by Ki Joo-bong – The Battleship Island, Coin Locker Girl) Dong-jun has fallen in with kidnaps Seo-woo, demanding him to fight unbeaten champion Steven Seagal if he’s to get her back. Of course, he does, travelling to LA to partake in a cage match organised by a dodgy fight promoter played by Kevin Grevioux (the Underworld franchise’s Raze).
The climatic fight is hilariously inept. Lest we remember 2004 also features the most heavily body doubled Seagal flick of his entire filmography, Out of Reach, here he’s also doubled for 95% of what’s an already short fight. Worse still, all that’s really obscuring the fact that it’s a double is the mesh of the cage, almost as if everyone knew it would be impossible to pass the double off as Seagal, even if they only shot from the back, so figured let’s just shoot facing forward but from outside the ring. The extensive doubling means that Seagal’s total screen time amounts to about 5 minutes, and the fight doesn’t even end properly. After Dong-jun gets a thorough beating, Hye-ri and Seo-woo arrive on the scene, and through their combined histrionics cranked up to 11 – involving an ear-piercing combination of wailing and inaudible screaming – he finds the motivation to stand up and deliver a flying kick which freeze frames before making contact.
The best thing about the whole fight could well be argued to be that Simon Rhee (Silent Assassins, Furious) has a cameo as an audience member watching it. He even gets a line. Oh, and this could well be the only movie where Seagal has his weight announced on loudspeaker (“…the 225-pound 5-time heavy weight world champion!”). None of this really makes Clementine worth watching though. Throwing in crash zooms, a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Kim Bo-sung (Partner, Two Cops 3), and a truly cringe worthy end credits sequence that has actress Eun Seo-woo professing her love for Steven Seagal to-camera, Clementine is a wasted opportunity, and an even bigger waste of time.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3/10
Wow. I kind of wanted to watch this train wreck of a movie because, honestly, the review was sort of intriguing me. However, the trailer completely dispelled that notion. Oh my word! Sap-sap-sappy!!! Never even knew Seagal was in Korean film, much less would play a villainous role. That must’ve been a good paycheck.
Great writeup, Paul. Love the digs. Making me smirk.
I briefly heard of this movie years ago, but wisely never went looking for it. It does sound painful.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s even legal to trick your son-in-law into thinking his wife is dead. At the very least, it’s unforgivable.
Seagal seemed to be holding on to what was left of his physique at this point in his career, so one has to wonder why he was doubled so much. This was before he started using doubles for walking up stairs or sitting down, so what was up?
What’s interesting about ‘Clementine’ is that it was the first time for Seagal to take a supporting role that involved him busting out his trademark action chops (‘Executive Decision’ and ‘Ticker’ don’t really count in that regard). It’s probably the only time in his onscreen career where he’s lost a fight, in a steel cage match no less, and it seems his ego even in the early 00’s was such that any time he’d have to take a hit (or even just look like he’d taken one), it’d be his double that would do the work.
Well, there is Machete where Danny Trejo stabbed him, but Seagal finished himself off because he couldn’t stand to lose a fight at that time. Then there was China Salesman where Mike Tyson beat the hell out of his stunt double. (And I get the feeling that Tyson and Seagal weren’t even in the same room when they filmed that “fight.”
and then there’s The Perfect Weapon in which at the end he gets killed by himself. XD
gods that flick is fucking terrible.