Written and directed by Kim Yon-hoon
Starring Jeon Do-yeon, Jung Woo-sung and Bae Seong-woo
Running time: 1 hour and 48 minutes

by Billy Russell

Many of the press materials for Kim Yong-hoon’s new film, Beasts Clawing at Straws, compares it to last year’s Best Picture winner, Parasite, but aside from some superficial similarities (they’re both South Korean pictures with a twisted sense of humor dealing with class struggles), the two have very little in common. I get it, though. Parasite was a big deal, the first non-English-speaking film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards in the United States. If there’s a passing similarity, it makes sense to hitch yourself to its wagon and try to get in on some of its success.

Which is not to disparage Beasts Clawing at Straws. I’m glad it’s its own, unique thing--”unique” here being a relative term. It sounds like I’m throwing around back-handed compliments, but part of Beast’s charm is how derivative it is of American films and what it does with our expectations as an audience. In a way, it feels like South Korea’s take on the French New Wave. The French New Wave films took American plots and slathered them with cool music, cigarette smoke and discussions of crimes in cafes. Beasts Clawing at Straws is shot through a neon haze of modern noir and an ironic eye for plotting. Sometimes those expectations are subverted, other times they are taken to their next logical evolution and allowed to reach absurd highs before crashing back down and running a poetic full circle, like going out for a life-saving purchase of Lucky Strike cigarettes.

There are three main stories that weave throughout the plot, intersecting at various points. Joong-man (Bae Seong-woo), an employee at a sauna, finds a Louis Vuitton bag loaded with cash and no apparent owner. He takes the bag home and contemplates how all that money could change his life. In a set-up that feels like it owes a debt of gratitude to A Simple Plan, the movie instead moves backward in time to show how the bag of money came to be. Tae-young (Jung Woo-sung) is indebted to the local mafia because of dealings with his ex, who skipped town and left him to clean up the mess. And then there’s Mi-ran (Shin Hyun-bin), who sees a plan unfold to kill her abusive husband and goes along for the ride, wherever it may take her.

We see familiar images we’ve seen from other movies--the bag of money from A Simple Plan, a Jackie Brown-esque plot from a woman who’s got plans of her own to walk off with it, a Blood Simple giddiness to set up these plots and watch every horrible thing unfold in both predictable and unexpected results. Yet a movie isn’t so much in what it’s about, but in how it’s told. Kim Yong-hoon has a directorial confidence and these plot twists and turns don’t feel like an attempt to show off how clever he is. It feels very much like an organic creation. There’s no hint of cynicism in checking off boxes to make sure it’s reminiscent of this and that to attract certain viewers to maximize revenue. It feels like a labor of love.

In that way, Beasts Clawing at Straws feels like an older movie. It feels like a movie that would have come out during the time when every young, budding filmmaker wanted to be the next Quentin Tarantino. It was unavoidable. Pulp Fiction’s influence on the 90s left a huge number of wannabes and imitators, and some were better than others. Hell, some were pretty damned good. Beasts would have been one of the ones that stood on its own merits. It would have been like a Go, instead of a Very Bad Things.

Whenever there’s a movie like this, with the multiple stories, I feel like one always drags. That’s no different in Beasts Clawing at Straws. Tae-young’s story felt less interesting to me than the other two, but thankfully everything ties together in a satisfying way. A movie like Beasts Clawing at Straws is only as good as its ending. It’s a hard thing to land correctly. A bad ending can sink a movie like this. I wouldn’t dare spoil it, I wouldn’t dare explain where the money comes from, where it goes, what kind of journey it goes on,and especially not where it winds up. But what tickles me about Beasts is its use of repetition and cyclical storytelling. Events occur and reoccur, sometimes with a darker twist as it comes around again. How everything resolves is very clever and deserved.

Beasts Clawing at Straws is available to watch on demand now.

*Read more from Billy Russell in the pages of our Fall 2020 zine featuring noir flicks.*