2009: Lost Memories (2002)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Si-myung Lee

Writers:

Sang-hak Lee (writer)
Si-myung Lee (writer)

Release Date:

1 February 2002 (South Korea)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

A failed assassination attempt in Harbin, China in 1909 changes the course of history. Now two JBI agents must find the connections between it and an ancient Korean artifact.

Plot Keywords:

Korean | 1909 | Japan | Artifact | Resistance

Awards:

5 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Kil-Kang Ahn	...	Myung-Hak Lee
Masaaki Daimon
Shohei Imamura
Dong-Kun Jang	...	Masayuki Sakamoto
Nobuyuki Katsube
Min-sun Kim	...	Kindergarten teacher
Sa-Pi Lee
George Manley	...	Inoue Man (voice: English version)
Ken Mitsuishi	...	Hideyo
Tôru Nakamura	...	Shojiro Saigo
Jin-ho Seo	...	Hye-Rin Oh
Goo Shin	...	Takahashi
Sang-Jeon Woo
Miki Yoshimura	...	Yuriko Saigo

MPAA:

Rated R for pervasive strong violence.

Runtime:

136 min

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean | Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Malaysia:18SG | Finland:K-15 | Argentina:16 | Sweden:15 | Australia:M | Germany:18 | Singapore:NC-16 | Singapore:PG (cut) | South Korea:12 | USA:R

Company:

CJ Entertainment

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Sakamoto dives behind the couch you can see that next to his gun holster, on the back of the couch, there is a mound exactly where the squib for the gunshot is going to go off.

Movie Connections:

References Uisa Ahn Jung-geun (1972)

Slam-bang action thriller one of the best yet from Korea

2009 LOST MEMORIES (2002): Fantastic action thriller set in an deliberately-created alternate future in which Korea is just another Japanese state, and Koreans have largely lost their identity. A Korean-blooded, Japanese-named cop slowly realizes that the terrorists he's paid to wipe out are actually Korean freedom-fighters trying to restore the timeline to its proper state.

This film gets slagged nearly everywhere, so I defend it whenever possible. It's a big, loud, arguably overblown "blockbuster" that deals with a very sensitive subject: Korean identity. People have, I believe, unfairly examined and criticized this film on two fronts:

one, it's inherent patriotism, which is an element of Korean cinema that seems to alienate so many non-Korean viewers and yet is a fundamental part of the culture, probably more so than in any other Asian country (let alone much of the world). And two, the historical events behind its "science fiction," which nearly everybody I've read gets wrong. The key plot device of the film is NOT simply that Japan won World War II, but that the legendary Korean patriot Ahn Chung-gun FAILED in his assassination of Japanese foreign minister Ito Hirobumi in China in 1909 (thus, sort of, the point of the title being 100 years later). This single event is extremely important to the Korean culture and not only is their a gigantic memorial named after Ahn, but also a form of Tae Kwon Do. Looking these two names up on the internet greatly aids in understanding the deeper messages this film offers. I give it a 9.