“Christmas Carol” Theatrical Poster
Director: Kim Seong-soo
Cast: Park Jinyoung, Kim Young-min, Heo Dong-won, Song Geon-hee, Kim Dong-Hwi
Running Time: 130 min.
By Paul Bramhall
While the English title of writer and director Kim Seong-soo’s 3rd feature Christmas Carol may sound like another disposable entry in Netflix’s festive movie lineup, thankfully the reality is very different. Taking the classic tale of a revenge seeking protagonist who intentionally gets sent to prison to hunt down those responsible for an injustice, those expecting a warmly festive themed dose of Korean cinema are best to look elsewhere.
Former K-pop group member Park Jinyoung (Yaksha: Ruthless Operations, A Stray Goat) plays an 18-year-old tearaway youth living on the bottom rungs of society. The breadwinner of his family, consisting of his dementia ridden grandmother and his mentally disabled twin brother (whom he also plays), when the latter is found dead in their apartment buildings water tank on Christmas eve, the authorities surmise it was a suicide. Despite the body showing signs of violence, the police visit the grandmother while Jinyoung is working and, not knowing any better, she signs off on the death certificate, only to also die a few days later. Jinyoung is convinced a trio of bullies who’d frequently pick on his brother are responsible for his death, however they’ve recently been admitted into a juvenile detention centre on an unrelated charge, and with one of their fathers being a prosecutor, the police have no interest in investigating any further.
Feeling betrayed by the authorities and left to fend for himself, the narrative opens with Jinyoung being admitted into the same centre, his sole purpose being to exact revenge on the trio. The introduction of a councillor who the inmates have regular sessions with, played by the late Kim Ki-duk regular Kim Young-min (One on One, Address Unknown), initially seems like it’s there to offer Jinyoung a ray of hope and contemplate forgiveness. However Young-min also had a connection to Jinyoung and his family outside of the detention centre, with them being one of the households who he’d deliver food packages to as part of his volunteer work. Familiar with their situation, Young-min starts to believe that Jinyoung is probably right about the trio being responsible, with their admission into the centre on a minor charge acting as a way for them to lay low until the brother’s death has blown over and is forgotten about.
Despite his beliefs, Young-min finds himself becoming aligned with Jinyoung’s plight, and does what he can to set things up so that he can go through with his plan. As the plot indicates, Christmas Carol is a suitably gritty and dark outing, one that sets itself up on the premise of a family tragedy, and plays out on the promise of revenge fuelled violence. The latter is certainly delivered upon, as Jinyoung immediately finds himself in over his head when he crosses paths with the sadistic chief of the detention centre, played with a cold detachment by Heo Dong-won (The Roundup, Special Delivery). Uncaring for who’s in the right or wrong, Dong-won serves to instil discipline into the inmates by beating them half to death if anyone steps out of line, and his limited presence acts as an effective way to make the times he does appear feel all the more intimidating.
There’s an interesting narrative structure to Christmas Carol, in that usually such tales have the protagonist come with an aura of mystery, with those who they’re after having no idea that they’ve been targeted. However here that’s not the case with the trio, who are ring led by K-drama actor Song Geon-hee (making his feature length debut), as they’re fully aware of what Jinyoung is there for, a decision which serves to intensify the threat of violence whenever they’re in the same vicinity as each other. The fact that they’re unphased by his presence makes them all the more reprehensible, and despite the eye for an eye nature of Jinyoung’s mindset, as the audience it feels easy to get behind his desire to make them pay for what he believes they did.
As a director Kim Seong-soo is part of that uniquely Korean club of filmmakers who appear out of the woodwork to make a movie every 10 years or so, then disappear. He’s in good company, with the likes of Oh Seung-wook and Sin Jeong-won sharing similar traits, and in Seong-soo’s case the last movie he helmed prior to making Christmas Carol was the 2013 Korea and Japan co-production Genome Hazard (which was also his sophomore outing as a director). For his debut you have to go back even further to 2005, when he made the crime thriller Running Wild. With a gap of 8 years between his debut and sophomore feature, and 9 years to get to Christmas Carol, perhaps we should expect Seong-soo’s next feature in 2032. Hopefully we’ll get it sooner, not least because he feels like one of those directors who emerged during the 2000’s who’s largely stuck to the same style of filmmaking.
There’s nothing commercial or glossy about Christmas Carol, and it takes an unflinching approach when it comes to depicting life in the juvenile detention centre. Seong-soo uses a number of interspersed flashbacks that serve the dual purpose of allowing the audience to see how the events unfolded that led to the present day set scenes, while also providing a chance to get to know the characters better. This is particularly relevant to Jinyoung, who in the present is mostly a seething coil of anger with a tunnel vision mindset, while in the past we get to see what his life was like before the tragedy occurred. Significantly, we also get to see him playing his twin brother, which offers up the opportunity to not only stretch his acting talents by portraying a mental disability, but also for the audience to understand more about the relationship between the pair.
Offering an unbiased look at the reality of their daily life, the move away from only seeing events play out from a revenge fuelled perspective is an effective one, with many of the scenes serving to flesh out the characters personalities and motivations. At 130 minutes there are admittedly times when the narrative begins to feel a little loose and rambling, especially when a new inmate is introduced who’s been transferred from another facility, the intention being for him to get rid of Jinyoung before he causes any more trouble. However to Seong-soo’s credit he eventually connects everything back to central plot, one which culminates in a tense scene where Jinyoung only has a small window of opportunity to execute his plan during the communal shower time. As with all the best Korean crime thrillers, the resulting confrontation is a messy and desperate one that doesn’t shy away from the required brutality.
While obviously not having the same budget as the previous times he sat in the director’s chair, as a gritty slice of revenge Christmas Carol ticks pretty much all the boxes in terms of what you hope from the genre. However Seong-soo has a twist up his sleeve that’s revealed during the final scenes, and it’s a revelation that offers up a narrative punch to the stomach, harking back to the kind of reveal that Korean cinema was the master of during the 2000’s (I’m thinking Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy and Kim Hyeong-jun’s No Mercy). As dark as it is twisted, when the closing credits begin to roll most will likely be left mouth agape, as the truth about everything that’s happened previously is placed on the table in plain sight.
While the uncompromising nature and dark narrative that drives Christmas Carol has fallen out of favour in Korean cinema during recent years, it’s a relief to see movies like this one are still being made, even if they no longer have the sizable budgets that they did 20 years ago. Kim Seong-soo can hardly be called prolific, but it’s a welcome return to see him back in the director’s chair, and Kim Jinyoung proves to be an effective anchor capable of carrying some heavy subject matter on his shoulders. It may not be a typical Christmas Carol, but it’s certainly one that’s deserves to be seen.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10
