The Laundryman (2015)
I forgot I owned an Amazon Prime account; I'm constantly on Netflix searching for obscure movies to review that I miss the Prime logo on my PS4 and never give it the time of day it deserves. So today, having really scoured the weird Korean titles Netflix has to offer, I went to Prime and got myself a weird Chinese title.
The Laundryman, directed by Chung Lee and written by Chung Lee and Yu-Hsun Chen (The Village of No Return) is not what I'd call a great film, not even what I'd call a good film. It's a film, it has all the components to make one, in fact it has all the components to make a great film, but it doesn't use them well, and to add insult to injury it feels like it's low budget. Let me explain.
Here's the Amazon description of this film: "A hitman is quite literally haunted by the ghosts of his past in this unique blend of supernatural action-comedy set in the neon-lit world of cynical psychics, seductive mob bosses, and clever cops." Well that's just not true. Take out everything after "of his past" and you're almost there. This is a film about a hitman who works for a manipulative woman; he's instructed to kill people, and their ghosts haunt him. Sick of their antics he goes to a medium for help to get rid of them. The plot is intriguing, especially as it picks up the pace about half way through, and some of the more comedic moments really work. I love this idea of spinning the poltergeist trope on its head and making it a funny thing, and this film has some genuinely funny moments such as when the main character dashes out of the building telling them they can have his house. I wish the film had stuck with this tone as it could have made for a funny film about a hitman and his ghosts; unfortunately it doesn't, and while it offers something more interesting in return, it squanders that in a sea of confusion and convoluted plot-lines.
The film is shifting tone and narrative so much it almost loses all sense of identity, and when the end credits roll (that are super stylised and awesome by the way) it just feels disjointing and strange. In fact it shifts narratives so much that it messes up its own plot with continuity errors. Not only are there many during the action scenes (especially as the editor thought it would be hilarious to cut about a bazillion times during these scenes) but in the main plot as well. The idea is that the hitman has recently been seeing the ghosts of his victims, bar one who is just chilling out with him for supposedly no reason. Except the first person we see him kill in the beginning of the film never turns up as a ghost, and another ghost is present, but then forgotten about straight after her only scene. In fact in a later scene we see even more ghosts, but these don't seem to be a problem for the main character as these too are forgotten about. What could have been interesting is if the plot was about the hitman trying to rid himself of his ghosts, but realising there are simply too many to get rid of; but this doesn't seem to be what they were going for, or if it was this isn't made clear.
Also remember that "seductive mob bosses, and clever cops" bit? Well it's sort of true, but not really. There are "cops" in it, but they turn up at random toward the end investigating the murders of the people who hired the hitman in the first place. Then they disappear for a bit only to just appear again later. They're not really "clever" either as we never really get to see what they've uncovered in their investigation, and they just sort of seem to come to the right conclusions without explaining how. I guess they are clever then, huh. The mob bosses bit though I'm a bit iffy on. I'm not sure what the description means; there aren't any? It may be referring to the main villain, but she's not a mob boss. Bit lost on that one Amazon. But this mistranslation perhaps, or just misinformation, plays into the subtitles of this film which are just not good. There are so many sentences that just miss out words. I would understand if perhaps they were speaking some sort of slang, and that's why words were missed out, but not being a native Chinese speaker, I would never be able to get that, and I feel as if the subtitles should have made this clearer.
I mentioned earlier that it felt a little low budget and I feel like it may be the film's biggest shortcoming. In all of the fight scenes the sound design is just a little off, and sometimes the music is too loud so we can't hear anything anyway. Some of the sounds just seem weird, or are non existent so we see actions that we don't hear if that makes sense. I feel like a bigger budget would have helped translate the weird style they were perhaps trying to go for. The end credits are really cool, but they never manage to pull anything like that off in the actual movie, which is a shame, but might be to do with the low budget. Also there's never more than like 5 people on screen, which kinda screams low budget in a film like this. There are fight scenes, but they never really feel as if there are any stakes involved, especially when it's usually one on one and we know the main character's a beefcake anyway (plus the weapons look unbelievably fake in some shots).
This film also insists it has a plot twist at the end, but it's shot so weirdly and edited together so confusingly that I didn't really understand what was going on until I really put some thought and effort into it. I feel like that's sort of representative of the whole film's overall narrative. It's messy, confusing, and while it may have good ideas they never land.
The Laundryman is boring, dull and quite frankly a bit of a chore to get through. I guess there was never a point where I wanted to turn it off, but that might be more out of sheer laziness than anything. I think The Laundryman could have been so much more, and the end credits scream this to the audience, but as is it's not really a film worth watching. It's funny at times sure, and has some cool ideas, but in the end of the day this film wasted my time and is now just a stain on my already pretty tarnished blog.
4/10
The Laundryman, directed by Chung Lee and written by Chung Lee and Yu-Hsun Chen (The Village of No Return) is not what I'd call a great film, not even what I'd call a good film. It's a film, it has all the components to make one, in fact it has all the components to make a great film, but it doesn't use them well, and to add insult to injury it feels like it's low budget. Let me explain.
Here's the Amazon description of this film: "A hitman is quite literally haunted by the ghosts of his past in this unique blend of supernatural action-comedy set in the neon-lit world of cynical psychics, seductive mob bosses, and clever cops." Well that's just not true. Take out everything after "of his past" and you're almost there. This is a film about a hitman who works for a manipulative woman; he's instructed to kill people, and their ghosts haunt him. Sick of their antics he goes to a medium for help to get rid of them. The plot is intriguing, especially as it picks up the pace about half way through, and some of the more comedic moments really work. I love this idea of spinning the poltergeist trope on its head and making it a funny thing, and this film has some genuinely funny moments such as when the main character dashes out of the building telling them they can have his house. I wish the film had stuck with this tone as it could have made for a funny film about a hitman and his ghosts; unfortunately it doesn't, and while it offers something more interesting in return, it squanders that in a sea of confusion and convoluted plot-lines.
The film is shifting tone and narrative so much it almost loses all sense of identity, and when the end credits roll (that are super stylised and awesome by the way) it just feels disjointing and strange. In fact it shifts narratives so much that it messes up its own plot with continuity errors. Not only are there many during the action scenes (especially as the editor thought it would be hilarious to cut about a bazillion times during these scenes) but in the main plot as well. The idea is that the hitman has recently been seeing the ghosts of his victims, bar one who is just chilling out with him for supposedly no reason. Except the first person we see him kill in the beginning of the film never turns up as a ghost, and another ghost is present, but then forgotten about straight after her only scene. In fact in a later scene we see even more ghosts, but these don't seem to be a problem for the main character as these too are forgotten about. What could have been interesting is if the plot was about the hitman trying to rid himself of his ghosts, but realising there are simply too many to get rid of; but this doesn't seem to be what they were going for, or if it was this isn't made clear.
Also remember that "seductive mob bosses, and clever cops" bit? Well it's sort of true, but not really. There are "cops" in it, but they turn up at random toward the end investigating the murders of the people who hired the hitman in the first place. Then they disappear for a bit only to just appear again later. They're not really "clever" either as we never really get to see what they've uncovered in their investigation, and they just sort of seem to come to the right conclusions without explaining how. I guess they are clever then, huh. The mob bosses bit though I'm a bit iffy on. I'm not sure what the description means; there aren't any? It may be referring to the main villain, but she's not a mob boss. Bit lost on that one Amazon. But this mistranslation perhaps, or just misinformation, plays into the subtitles of this film which are just not good. There are so many sentences that just miss out words. I would understand if perhaps they were speaking some sort of slang, and that's why words were missed out, but not being a native Chinese speaker, I would never be able to get that, and I feel as if the subtitles should have made this clearer.
I mentioned earlier that it felt a little low budget and I feel like it may be the film's biggest shortcoming. In all of the fight scenes the sound design is just a little off, and sometimes the music is too loud so we can't hear anything anyway. Some of the sounds just seem weird, or are non existent so we see actions that we don't hear if that makes sense. I feel like a bigger budget would have helped translate the weird style they were perhaps trying to go for. The end credits are really cool, but they never manage to pull anything like that off in the actual movie, which is a shame, but might be to do with the low budget. Also there's never more than like 5 people on screen, which kinda screams low budget in a film like this. There are fight scenes, but they never really feel as if there are any stakes involved, especially when it's usually one on one and we know the main character's a beefcake anyway (plus the weapons look unbelievably fake in some shots).
This film also insists it has a plot twist at the end, but it's shot so weirdly and edited together so confusingly that I didn't really understand what was going on until I really put some thought and effort into it. I feel like that's sort of representative of the whole film's overall narrative. It's messy, confusing, and while it may have good ideas they never land.
The Laundryman is boring, dull and quite frankly a bit of a chore to get through. I guess there was never a point where I wanted to turn it off, but that might be more out of sheer laziness than anything. I think The Laundryman could have been so much more, and the end credits scream this to the audience, but as is it's not really a film worth watching. It's funny at times sure, and has some cool ideas, but in the end of the day this film wasted my time and is now just a stain on my already pretty tarnished blog.
4/10
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