Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
RYU Jun-yeol, YOO Hai-jin, AN Eun-jin, AN Seok-hyun
Intro:
,,, artful and entertaining …
A massive hit in its native South Korea, this debut feature by AN Tae-jin mixes the classic period costume drama with modern sensibilities to impressive effect.
The 17th century set film follows peasant Kyeong-Soo, a young acupuncturist whose blindness gives him extraordinary sensitivity when practicing medicine, and which leads to an invitation to work at the royal court of the Joseon Dynasty. Seeing this as an opportunity to escape poverty, and to potentially help his sick 10-year-old brother, Kyeong-Soo quickly makes a mark with the royals, especially Crown Prince Sohyeon (a character whose enigmatic fate is straight out of the history books), who has returned home after 8 years of imprisonment by the Qing Dynasty.
Impressing everyone with his modesty and abilities, and on the eve of returning to see his brother, Kyeong-See is witness to a conspiratorial act of treachery that turns the Crown Prince’s homecoming on its head, and our hero is the prime suspect.
Hallyuwood is one of the most exciting cinematic movements of the modern era, and The Night Owl is a prime example. Mixing Asian sensibilities, culture, and attention to detail with Hollywood genres and polish, results in something original but familiar. In this case, you’ve got a story authentically steeped in Korean history, albeit with a Shakespearean touch, but instead of it feeling alien to a Western audience, you can clearly identify aspects of the superhero movie origin story here, or even the one-person revenge thriller most recently popularised by the Taken series of films. Not to say that it’s derivative, it’s ultimately a hero’s journey, and one that cinema has given us for decades. It’s just that in the hands of an artist such as Tae-jin, it proves both artful and entertaining. Bring on The Night Owl 2.
