Director: Lee Doo-Yong
Co-director: Godfrey Ho
Cast: Shin Woo-chul, Hwang Jang Lee, Jim Norris, Kwon Il-soo, Min Bok-gi, Park Dong-ryong
Running Time: 90 min.
By Paul Bramhall
It remains one of the greatest travesties in Korean cinema that director Lee Doo-yong’s The Trouble-Solving Broker is referenced in 99% of English language content as “another one of those Godfrey Ho cut and paste jobs.” The real tragedy is that it’s also true, with (as of the time of writing in 2024) no known surviving prints of Doo-yong’s original version in its native Korea, making the re-named Secret Executioners Filmark version that has Godfrey Ho’s name slapped on it as director a double-edged sword. On the one hand its a horrendously modified version of the original – clocking it at 90 minutes compared to the original runtime of 108, which when you factor in the newly inserted gweilo fight footage means there’s likely close to 30 minutes missing. On the other, it’s also the only available way to watch it. The perils of attempting to watch many of the entries in Korea’s taekwon-action genre!
In my feature Fists, Kicks, & Kimchi, I’d stated that “if it’s possible to choose one title which could be interpreted as the last of the ‘pure’ taekwon-action movies, then it would likely be The Trouble-Solving Broker.” Made during an era when the taekwon-action style was increasingly being incorporated into more traditional kung-fu themed settings thanks to the success of 1978’s Drunken Master, Secret Executioners acts as a kind of snapshot of the other direction the genre could have gone in. The 1980’s in general are considered a grim period for Korean Continue reading
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