[K-FILM REVIEWS] 국가대표 (Take Off)

Park Ji-Sung, Kim Yeon-Ah, names which carry the brand image of Korea around the world just as much as Samsung, LG and Hyundai do. Where exactly the idea of sports fits into all this, that's an entirely different matter.

There is no denying that Guus Hiddink's 2002 miracle brought Korean football (I won't use "soccer" unless forced to at gunpoint) from a niche sport which only mattered when the national team faced Japan to what is today the second most popular sports in the country after baseball. Several players play in the EPL and other European leagues, and despite never repeating and/or confirming the achievements of that crazy summer, Korea now definitely means something in world football, at least much more so than it did ten or fifteen years ago. The same could be said for Kim Yeon-Ah's incredible rise to stardom, her headline-grabbing rivalry with Japan's Asada Mao, and the top star status (and multi-million dollar endorsements) she enjoys in her homeland, a country which barely paid attention to figure skating before she exploded on the scene. But these are not exactly examples which will effectively demonstrate Korea's "philosophical" approach to sports, it's actually the short term affairs with other sports which perfectly exemplify the phenomenon.

Take, for instance, the small love story between the land of morning kimchi and basketball, when Ha Seung-Jin was drafted by Portland in 2004. Give it a couple of years of subpar performances and a quick return to Korea's domestic league, and the same NBA which was gracing the prime time of cable sports channels is now relegated to its old status, niche filler. If he's lucky, Park Tae-Hwan might be lucky enough to enjoy the limelight and elevate the profile of swimming in the country for the next few years, but a lack of medals at the next championships would pretty much spell the end of the country's infatuation with the young prodigy and his sport of choice. Some manage to overcome this irritatingly fickle sports culture, like former ssireum fighter Choi Hong-Man, who constantly transformed himself, first as an MMA fighter, then as a comic presence on TV variety shows, and lately even on the big screen, last seen as the beast-like villain in ゴエモン (Goemon), complete with a side-splittingly (ahem) hilarious coda to his character. Still, this is more often than not the exception confirming the rule, mentality which was at the center of MBC's lovely short drama 태릉선수촌 (Taereung National Village): you're only as good as your last medal. The shinier, the better.

This, of course, is a perfect platform to make a sports drama, mold which produced two entries in 2009 alone - films which were pretty much structured in a similar way, but not so surprisingly ended on opposite ends of the box office spectrum. The former would be the weightlifting dramedy 킹콩을 들다 (Lifting King Kong), which despite excellent acting by Jo An and Lee Beom-Soo's usual solid work didn't make much of a mark - admittedly, both the comedy bits and the second half's melodrama are so overwrought that they risk erasing the charismatic performance by the leads altogether; the second is 국가대표 (Take Off), the third consecutive hit for Kim Yong-Hwa, who keeps increasing his score film after film, this time hitting the all time Top 10. Explaining why this film sold eight million tickets is not exactly rocket science: a quasi-monopolistic wide distribution fighting side by side with the other big shark, Yoon Je-Gyun's disaster flick 해운대 (Haeundae); its being a feel good crowd pleaser effectively combining comedy, a little drama pushing the right buttons (family, again), and exhilarating sequences like all the best sports dramas. But whereas a director making it big three times in a row is not exactly a surprise, three straight homeruns borne out of derivative subjects which manage to find a voice of their own is quite an accomplishment.

When you think of his debut 오! 브라더스 (Oh! Brothers), Rain Man comes to mind, whereas his second feature 미녀는 괴로워 (200 Pounds Beauty) is a sort of Korean take on Shallow Hal. As for Take Off, you could literally cite a dozen films, from Cool Runnings all the way to Yaguchi Shinobu's dorky ウォーターボーイズ (Waterboys). Box office intake, too, has been on the rise, with the first selling over three million tickets in 2003, the second doubling its score in 2006, and the aforementioned jackpot by his third effort. Sure, we're not exactly dealing with superb filmmaking, as the scope of Kim's storytelling is neither broad nor terribly subtle. But Oh! Brothers wasn't the one trick pony you would expect from that kind of setup, and all things considered 200 Pounds Beauty was not the offensive teenybopper manure you'd rather expect to pollute Korean TV's airwaves. Kim makes quintessentially commercial films, crowd pleasers with very little ambitions other than the goal of entertaining its purveyors with some well acted, capably directed fluff. But that might very well be the reason why his films always manage to work, one way or another. Citing the fact he knows how to pick actors and make them shine would be too convenient, because clearly there is some kind of distinctive touch hiding in the shadows. Take Off is another one of these seemingly effortless popcorn flicks: it lets acting and characterization (as one-dimensional as it is) carry the pacing, so that when the big sports payoff surrounded by melodrama kicks in, it all becomes a lot more bearable than you'd expect. These are walking cliches for sure, but nobody is trying to fool you into thinking otherwise, and by pushing forward that modus operandi with at least a modicum of honesty - something Haeundae terribly lacked, for instance - even the most saccharine moments can be excused.

Bob (Ha Jung-Woo), a Korean adoptee with a somewhat illustrious past in ski jumping, finds himself becoming the new ace of Coach Bang's (Seong Dong-Il) unlikely project, assembling a Korean ski jumping team for the upcoming Winter Olympics. The task is easier said than done, as you can expect: maybe because of Korea's peculiar approach to sports culture, Bang finds it almost impossibly hard to recruit candidates for his team, particularly as ski jumping is not exactly a popular sport, and would never grant its "stars" economic stability. He does find his four, a collection of characters which would give the first ever Jamaican ski jumping team from Cool Runnings a run for its money: other than Bob, who only came back to Korea to find his birth mother and is still seemingly reluctant to reconnect with his ski-jumping past, Bang finds the slightly boorish Chil-Gu (Kim Ji-Seok), papa's boy Jae-Bok (Choi Jae-Hwan) and ticking bomb Heung-Cheol (Kim Dong-Wook), who all join for different reasons (avoiding military duty, for instance). As you can expect, even training itself is not easy, as the team ends up practicing in the forest with wires, on top of moving vans and even in run down amusement parks. And, even when they manage to grab a ticket for Nagano and the Winter Olympics, they find out that all this idea really amounted to was everything but sports, the first of many obstacles their path to the limelight will be laden with.

The first hour or so of Take Off requires a bit of patience: the acting is good all over the board, particularly the always reliable Ha and a very inspired Seong Dong-Il, but the comedy is a little too cute to make any impact, and mostly serves as an in-between filler to punctuate all the intriguing practice scenes. If anything, Kim never indulges on the cheap gag button, so those 50-60 minutes never really overstay their welcome, and more or less effectively lead into the real substance, the second half focusing on the ski jumping sequences and the family theme (Bob's search for his mother, and Chil-Gu's dualism with his brother, played by Lee Jae-Eung). Whereas the latter is just by the numbers melodrama acted well and delivered with earnest fervor, it's the jumping sequences which really help the film. Carefully researched with the help of the real team (the film is loosely based on the Korean ski jumping team's real life story) and shot with Red One and CamCat cameras, the jumps balance just the right mix of tension and adrenaline, complete with all the cliches of the sports canon (for good or bad).

And that is really all it entails to: Take Off is nothing more than a good popcorn flick, and it never pretends to be more than that - a mentality which might very well be its saving grace. It's well acted, well shot, and the predictable twist and turns are delivered in such low key fashion that when the inevitable melodrama switcheroo occurs, you kind of accept it as it is, knowing you didn't waste your time. And when a film of this kind runs for nearly two and a half hours (in the more polished director's cut) and still manages to never overstay its welcome, you know you're dealing with pretty accomplished fare. Does it take off? Not really, but unlike certain tsunami-related escapades, it certainly makes you understand why so many people enjoyed it. And that's really all we can ask from popcorn flicks: leaving you with a smile on your face by the time the ending credits roll, nothing less or more....

RATING: 7

국가대표 (Take Off)
Director: 김용화 (Kim Yong-Hwa)
Screenplay: 김용화 (Kim Yong-Hwa)
Produced By: KM Culture
Int'l Sales: Showbox/Mediaplex
Box Office: #2 - 8,088,809 Nationwide Admissions - 57,5 Billion Won
Running Time: 137 Minutes (147 Minutes Director's Cut)
Release: 7/29/2009 (12 and Over)
CAST: 하정우 (Ha Jung-Woo), 성동일 (Seong Dong-Il), 김지석 (Kim Ji-Seok), 김동욱 (Kim Dong-Wook), 이은성 (Lee Eun-Seong), 이재응 (Lee Jae-Eung), 최재환 (Choi Jae-Hwan), 이한위 (Lee Han-Wi), 김용건 (Kim Yong-Geon), 박정수 (Park Jung-Soo), 김지영 (Kim Ji-Young), 이혜숙 (Lee Hye-Sook), 쥬니 (Jooni), 조진웅 (Jo Jin-Woong), CAMEO: 강제규 (Kang Je-Gyu), 김수로 (Kim Soo-Ro), 오광록 (Oh Gwang-Rok)