Film

The Foul King (1999)

Director: Kim Ji-Woon

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Always late for work at the bank and routinely humiliated by his tyrannical manager, Daeho (Song) is physically large, clumsy, none too smart and deeply insecure. Thanks to a chain of accidents, he finds himself spending his free time training to become a masked villain in the wrestling ring under the name The Foul King; he naively expects his increasingly successful alter ego to give his everyday life a boost, but... The best thing about Kim's accomplished and funny movie (a huge hit in Korea) is its ability throughout to see humour through melancholy and vice versa - sometimes within single shots. It helps that everything from the slapstick gags to the comedy of embarrassment is rooted in a kind of realism, and that Song gives a quite phenomenal performance in the lead.

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