Luck-Key (2016)

A hapless loser assumes the identity of an amnesia victim without knowing that he is an assassin.

Director:

Kae-Byeok Lee (as Gye-byeok Lee)

Writers:

Yoon-Mi Jang (adapted screenplay), Yoon-Mi Jang

Stars:

Hae-jin Yoo, Joon Lee, Yun-hie Jo

2 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Hae-jin Yoo	...	Hyung-wook
Joon Lee	...	Jae-sung
Yun-hie Jo	...	Rina
Ji-yeon Lim	...	Eun-ju (as Ji-Yeon Lim)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Soon-Hyoung Cha	...	Choi Moon-seok (as Soon-hyeong Cha)
Joon Go	...	Kwon Hee-rak
Hye-bin Jeon	...	Hye-bin
Han-chul Jo	...	(as Han-Cheol Jo)
Jong-yeob Kim	...	(as Yeop Cha)
Dong-hwi Lee	...	Min-suk (as Dong-Hwi Lee)
Chang-ho Seong
Byoung-Sook Sung	...	Rina's Mom

Storyline

A reverse comedy that tells the story of a perfectionist assassin who falls and hits his head in a sauna, giving him amnesia. When a down-and-out actor switches locker keys with him, they switch lives until the hit-man, who soon becomes an action hero on TV, starts to remember things.

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Crime

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Details

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Release Date:

21 October 2016 (USA)

Also Known As:

Key of Life

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$113,846, 23 October 2016

Gross USA:

$466,505

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$48,165,531

Company Credits

Production Co:

DMZ Comics, DMZ Entertainment, Showbox/Mediaplex

Technical Specs

Runtime:

112 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the second time where veteran supporting actor Yu Hae-Jin play a main character in his 20 years long career. The first one is in "Miss Conspirator" (2012) and the recently third one is in "Confidential Assignment" (2017).

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Connections

Remake of Key of Life (2012)

User Reviews

Funny and enjoyable Korean body-swap comedy

The 'Body Switch' genre in which two very different characters swap identities is very common in American cinema. If you aren't familiar then think of any film from the eighties, where Tom Hanks played an adult with the mind of a teenager in Big. Or Freaky Friday, The Parent Trap, 17 Again…

It seems that South Korean directors love the genre too. So much so that there has been a spate of films where a character takes on the physical identity of someone else, for comic or dramatic effect. (Some recent examples: The Beauty Inside (2015), Masquerade (2012), and Miss Granny (2014). This was pointed out during the recent Korean Cinema conference. My guess is that in a society based on strict Confucian rules, individuality is not desired, so people long to escape these narrow confines and to be someone else. So when a down and out actor takes a suave hit-man's locker key in a bath-house, we're all set for a hilarious comedy where the lives are reversed: the loser (Jaesing) becomes the hit-man and the hit-man (Hyung-wook) starts living the life of the struggling actor who is behind with the rent on his sad-sack loft apartment.

After waking up from his concussion, Hyung-wook is too poor to pay for his medical treatment and has to borrow money from the kindly Rina (Yun-hie Jo), who works as a TV agent. He moves into Jaesing's trash filled apartment. Meanwhile, newly rich Jaesing soon pays off his debts and lives the high life in a luxury penthouse where he discovers a stash of weapons as well as a surveillance camera which is fixed 24 hours on an attractive woman in the apartment above.

The hit man soon endears himself to Rina and her family, and when he starts working at her mother's snack bar he wows the customers with his astonishing knife play. What's funny here is that the tough guy can't understand where he picked up these skills, or how he is able to put his new neighbour in a headlock and throw him to the ground when he tries to start a fight. Whenever someone asks his age he can't keep a straight face, because he looks so much older. Haejin has a wonderfully expressive face: whenever he is told to smile he looks as though he is about to dispatch his next victim.

When he discovers that Jae-sing is an actor (usually as an extra in TV melodramas), he goes to the set and soon impresses the director with his realistic fighting ability. He becomes better at acting than his predecessor, moving from one-line parts to becoming the lead in a corny television drama that ends each episode with ridiculous cliffhangers (if you have ever watched a Korean TV drama, you will know what I mean).

I went in to this film not knowing anything about the story or with any expectations and when I finished watching I was pleasantly surprised. With so much advance hype and spoilers being regularly leaked, its possible to watch a film with no surprises or real excitement. That's a shame, and a good reason to watch international cinema more often.