After five years, the director of "Others is Hell" is back with a new work.
This time, it is not the alienation of people under social pressure, but the "justice of killing": an unlucky person is forced to become a serial killer after impulsively killing people, but he finds that he kills all the evil people ......In this case, are you a criminal or a superhero who eliminates harm for the people?
The strong absurdist emotional catharsis and formalist narrative make "The Embarrassment of the Murderer" quite eye-catching.
There are eight episodes in the whole play, and you can finish it in one afternoon. The whole show is clearly divided into two parts: the first three episodes tell the story of how the unlucky male protagonist turns from an ordinary person to a serial murderer step by step, and discovers his super talent-No matter what bad things you do, you won't be discovered; Also, the one he killed was either a wanted person on the run, or a bad guy who had just committed a crime.
In short, every "victim" deserves to die, and it happened to be planted in the hands of the male protagonist Li Tang (mistranslated as "Yidang").
The first drunk uncle who was knocked out by Lee Tang (played by Choi Woo-sik) with a hammer not only just killed a colleague, but also a wanted criminal who has been incognito for ten years; the second, a fake blind girl who witnessed the male protagonist committing a crime and extorting money, and was killed by the male protagonist, once killed her parents and cheated on insurance; The third and fourth, two delinquent teenagers who attacked the police, were ...... by female classmates
There was a subway judge before, and there is a bastard judge, and the male protagonist is simply the reincarnation of a bastard judge.
And how good is the luck of the male protagonist?
When Li Tang got a hammer from the supermarket where he worked, a fly happened to land on the monitor, obscuring most of his vision;
After the false blind girl died, her dog licked and ate the scene for several days, leaving no fingerprints at all;
Li Tang sorted out the physical evidence and decided to turn himself in, but as soon as he got out of the bank, he was robbed of his bag by a motorcycle robber, and the bag full of evidence was thrown into the river ......
At this point, the male protagonist has been perfectly invisible in several cases, which is really the luck that Ram (an American bank robber and known for his bad luck) has not envied for eight lifetimes.
The first three episodes continue to ambush the grass snake gray line, and several incidents are interlocking. The male protagonist was unlucky again and again, killed impulsively again and again, felt guilty again and again, and found out again and again that the person who killed was a wicked person, and cleared the suspicion again and again, which made people laugh and cry. The restlessness, autism, and escape of a mediocre ordinary person after committing a crime of passion, and the anxiety of reality make the audience empathize; And when fate kept playing jokes with him, the sense of absurdity overflowed the screen.
Director Lee Chang-hee adopted a formalist narrative this time, using a lot of psychological reality, blending fiction and reality, and having a strong visual impact.
The scene that best reflects the protagonist's psychological turn is that the first uncle who was hammered to death by the male protagonist kept appearing in the male protagonist's fantasy, bleeding and smiling, making the male protagonist unavoidable. And when the male protagonist found out that the uncle turned out to be a wanted criminal, the male protagonist immediately turned against the guest, grabbed the other party's neck, and showed ecstasy. The souls who were killed by the uncle stretched out their bloody hands and climbed up together.
The male protagonist and the criminal police who tracked him down are very interesting in casting, and there is a stark contrast in appearance and identity. Li Tang's actor Cui Yuzhi looks like a little white rabbit, his temperament is lazy and simple, and he has an ignorant sense of youth and student, but his eyes are sharp and cold.
On the contrary, the embarrassed actor Sun Xijiu (the male protagonist of "My Liberation Diary") has a rough temperament, is not stingy, walks handsome and rough style, and looks like a big villain.
However, from the fourth episode, the direction of the plot has become magical, and the superhero core of this story has begun to appear.
The male protagonist's abilities are seen by a chubby computer master, and the male protagonist is recruited into the organization he created, "Only for Heroes" (League of Legends). This little fat man calls himself Robin (yes, Batman's assistant) and believes in "upholding justice in a gray area that the law does not cover."
And the male protagonist's talent buff is fully manifested after joining this organization: as long as you pass by someone on the road, you can know if this person is guilty - the goosebumps on the male protagonist's neck are more spiritual than a lie detector.
In the play, a killer comparison is also set for the male protagonist. Before recruiting the male protagonist, Robin originally had other partners, a fugitive criminal policeman, but this old criminal policeman often kills people who are not guilty of death in the name of justice.
But Robin thinks that Li Tang is different, because he has the ability to accurately identify the wicked, not accidentally hurt the innocent, and the luck to get out successfully.
But what exactly is justice? When the law cannot punish evil, who has the power and qualification to judge and be an executioner and act for heaven?
This is also the "murder justice" issue of "The Embarrassment of the Murderer". Regarding this kind of issue, there have been many excellent Korean dramas, including Lee Dixun's "Model Taxi" and Nam Joo-hyuk's "Illegal Justice", all of which are superhero routines of folk peerless masters to eliminate harm for the people.
The core of "The Embarrassment of the Murderer"** is deeper, the so-called justice or not, in essence, is about human nature. In the play, it is expressed through the mouth of the criminal police:
There is only one word difference between 'victim' and 'perpetrator', the boundary between them is not so clear, and people are the same. —To the wicked people who were killed by the male protagonist.
Being a criminal police officer is like walking on the wall of a prison, it's okay to keep your balance and move forward, if you accidentally fall, if you're lucky, you will become a commoner, on the contrary, if you fall to the other side, you will go to jail. If you don't want to go to jail, you'll have to run away. —To the old detective who killed the red eye in the name of justice.
Regarding the title of the show, there is another interesting bug.
The Korean title "o" actually literally translates to "Murderer and Embarrassment", because the name of the main character in the play is "Embarrassment", his father is an old criminal policeman who has been smuggling drugs for many years, and his mother has an extramarital affair, and Embarrassment has been unpopular since childhood.
And the Chinese mistranslated as "the embarrassment of the murderer", and the fate of the people in the play is opposite, whether it is a decent or a villain, a victim or a perpetrator, they all have an embarrassing past and an embarrassing future.
To a certain extent, the number of superheroes in the last five episodes dissipates the reality of the first three episodes, but it also makes up for the public opinion risk caused by the ambiguous three views. For crime dramas, it is a new attempt.
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