Low Life

I recently saw this film at the Toronto International Film Festival and was considerably disappointed with the undeniably poor execution of Lowlife. At first I was charmed by the studio lot setting and the curiously out of place fight sequences, but eventually the poor editing and confused narrative line left me impatiently waiting for the credits to roll. The director attempts to tell a sprawling story of one man's tumultuous maturation within the context of South Korean political situation during the second half of the 20th century. And although I'm not acquainted with that history, it seems the film takes a very simplistic approach to the period's temperaments. The filmmakers simply try to do too much, eventually diminishing the potency latent in the socio-political situation as well as the engaging performance of the lead actor. The film definitely has more of a movie of the week feel to it with all its heavy-handedness and slap-dash film-making. The fact that the film was rushed (ironically, much like the films being satirized within the film) is most evident in a sequence where the lead and another actor sit in front of a store in the 1960s with modern NFL gear inside. Now i'm not a stickler for continuity but c'mon.