“Thunderbird” Theatrical Poster
Director: Lee Jae-Won
Cast: Seo Hyun-Woo, Lee Myeong-Ro, Lee Seol, Kim Kyu-baek, Park Seung-tae, Choi Euna
Running Time: 96 min.
By Paul Bramhall
I confess to being a fan of the “having a bad day” sub-genre, the kind which places a character (or characters) in an unenviable situation over the course of a short timeframe, and come with a narrative that’s usually built around the mantra of everything that can go wrong does go wrong. The likes of 2014’s A Hard Day stands out as a classic example, and in more recent times the Netflix series Beef proved to be a superlative slice of the genre done well. In 2022 director Lee Jae-won made his debut with Thunderbird, which doubles as his feature graduation project from the Korea Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), taking the same framework but switching up a bad day for a bad night, playing out across one night in the small town of Jeongseon.
In the opening scene we meet a beaten-up gambling addict played by Lee Myeong-ro (The Roundup: No Way Out, Snowball) who’s being help captive in the backseat of his own car – a souped up Audi 44 that the titular Thunderbird refers to. Being kept company by a pair of debt collectors, they pawn the car to a local pawnshop to collect some of the money he owes, and give him a deadline of midnight to find the rest. Dumped in the street with his shoes and mobile thrown into a nearby stream, Myeong-ro is left with no choice but to use a payphone to contact his taxi driver brother to come and pick him up. Played by Seo Hyun-woo (Spiritwalker, Decision to Leave), a sense of family duty rather than friendly intentions see him call it a day on the shift he’s working, not least because he’s someone who Myeong-ro also owes money to.
After retrieving his shoes and phone from the stream, Myeong-ro reveals to Hyun-woo that he recently struck lucky in one of his gambling endeavours, winning 50 million won in cash that he stored in the trunk of the car. The catch? He didn’t have a chance to take it out before he was accosted by the debt collectors. Knowing how much even a portion of 50 million won could help him out, Hyun-woo reluctantly agrees to help find the vehicle so that the cash can be retrieved, keen to escape the small-town trappings and make it back to Seoul where he got his degree. It’s revealed that Hyun-woo hasn’t been back in Jeongseon that long, although why he returned from Seoul is left largely unspoken, with only hints given that it wasn’t a decision made because he wanted to.
The contrast of the two siblings comes to form the core of Thunderbird, and while initially it seems like the focus will be on Myeong-ro and his race against time to find the rest of the money he owes by midnight, the narrative eventually settles on Hyun-woo as the main character for the audience to be invested in. It’s a smart move, as while the devil may care attitude of Myeong-ro gives a live wire energy to the scenes he’s in, it’s Hyun-woo who ultimately feels more interesting, his character coming across both as one which feels familiar, as well as being shrouded in mystery. Questions like why he left Seoul are one’s that Thunderbird isn’t there to provide an answer to, but Jae-won utilises them to provide layers to the character he’s created, understanding that you don’t need to know all of someone’s history to still be able to connect with them.
While Myeong-ro comes across like a no-hoper gambler who’s comfortable in his hometown, conversely it becomes clear Hyun-woo feels ashamed to be back, and has done his best to stay off the local radar by ferrying out-of-towners to and from the local casino as a taxi driver. As much as the ticking clock to find the car before it’s moved along the food chain provides an effective narrative thrust, there’s an underlying tension that Jae-won keeps quietly simmering just beneath the surface between the pair that equally serves to keeps things on a knife edge. When a third character is added to the narrative in the form of Myeong-ro’s swindler girlfriend, played by Lee Seol (Hard Hit, The Divine Fury), the trio concoct a plan to get just enough money to buy back the car from the pawn shop it was sold to, which is when one bad decision starts to lead to another.
In case it’s not clear already, the world that Thunderbird takes places in primarily consists of 2 types of characters – those who owe money, and those who its owed to. Characters on the lower rungs of society who have their backs against the wall are a staple of the Korean independent movie scene, but Jae-won smartly sidesteps the typically sullen approach by framing the characters he’s created (he also wrote the script) within the context of an against the clock thriller. Of course the best thrillers are able to instil the same sense of stress the characters are going through into the audience watching, and to that end Thunderbird does a stellar job, with the gradually escalating sense of desperation often feeling palpable.
There’s a sense in the early scenes that Hyun-woo is trying to do the right thing, with his exasperation apparent when he unknowingly takes part in one of Myeong-ro and Seol’s scams involving tricking customers out of their credits at the casino. However the more the narrative progresses, the more intertwined the trio’s relationships become, in part driven by Hyun-woo’s superiority complex to the surroundings and situation he finds himself in, despite the reality that his situation isn’t much more stable than his brothers. It’s the same attitude which gradually starts to see greed start come to the fore as they get closer to retrieving the cash, with the united front the trio originally showed starting to give way to each character making decisions based on what’s best for them. By the time Hyun-woo convinces himself to take the lot, the decisions he’s made frame him in a very different light than when we first meet him.
For a debut feature Thunderbird is remarkably assured. Director Jae-won has been around in the film industry since 2015 in a variety of positions ranging from working in the directing department, lighting, cinematography, and even editing, however nothing he’s done prior gives an indication to his talent for storytelling and characters. Outside the trio of leads the world that the story unfolds in feels like a fully formed one where it’s very much dog eat dog, and there’s a number of supporting characters who come to play important roles in the direction the narrative heads. Kim Kyu-baek (Mission Cross, Peninsula) in particular clocks in a memorable performance, playing a scrawny debt collector who knows the trio from their school days when he used to get bullied, and has grown up to have serious self-confidence issues and a penchant for setting people on fire. While nothing so graphic is shown, the threat of it feels very real.
Likewise for veteran actress Park Seung-tae (Ballerina, Burning), who plays the owner of the pawn shop, and becomes the catalyst for many of the decisions that send the trio down an increasingly desperate path. Similar to Hyun-woo but within a much shorter time, her character arc proves to be another fine example of Jae-won’s ability to drastically change the audience’s perception from when we first meet them, with Seung-tae going from being a victim to another of the trio’s problems in entertaining fashion.
Cinema has taught us for decades that money can make even the most grounded character go a little crazy, and Thunderbird takes that concept and plays it out as an anxiety inducing microcosm over the course of one night in a small-town. Characters intentions are swayed, and each decision further confounds the previous bad decision, culminating in a final karaoke bar set scene that serves to hammer home the darker places that desperation is capable of sending anyone to. Consistently tense, occasionally uncomfortable, and even a little heartbreaking, Thunderbird marks Lee Jae-won as a talent to look out for, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10
