Totally Lost
Lee Yo-sup’s remake of Soi Cheang’s deceptively simple thriller needs to take a lesson from ‘The Bear’: Subtract.
The PLot
Director: Lee Yo-sup • Writer: Lee Yo-sup, based on Accident by Szeto Kam-yuen, Nicholl Tang
Starring: Gang Dong-won, Lee Moo-saeng, Lee Mi-sook, Lee Hyun-wook
South Korea • 1hr 59mins
Opens Hong Kong July 4 • IIB
Grade: C
Oh my god Lee Yo-sup’s The Plot | 설계자 is so loud. The remake of Soi Cheang’s 2009 thriller Accident, the under-the-radar psychodrama that’s way better than you remember it, had great potential to update the nonsense premise and say a thing or two about our social media saturated landscape; about how nothing gets past anyone anymore, among other disturbing trends. And when I say nonsense plot, I mean that in the best way. Where original writers Szeto Kam-yuen and Nicholl Tang Nik-kei leaned into the main character’s paranoia and unfounded suspicions – and in many ways his unstable mental state, which is very much in Cheang’s wheelhouse – Lee goes for whatever dramatic options are the most outlandish and OTT. And, yes, the loudest. The ear-splitting sound mix and aggressive score by Kim Tae-seong (who did great work on Exhuma and the Netflix series Chicken Nugget) rivals Tenet in its obnoxiousness. The Plot is slick, polished, and clearly had way more toys to play with, but by adding characters, backstories, twists and turns Lee simply muddles the… uh… plot (sorry) and misses the finesse of the original film – and the point.
Koo does blank better
In Cheang’s original, Louis Koo Tin-lok played Brain, the leader of a shadowy gang that hired itself out for assassinations that look like freak accidents. A job goes wrong, one of his crew dies, and he becomes consumed by distrust, sure it was in inside job. The end. In The Plot, Gang Dong-won (Broker) plays Yeong-il, the leader of a shadowy gang that hires itself out for assassinations that look like freak accidents. Joo Young-seon (Jung Eun-chae, Apple series Pachinko), a lawyer and the daughter of potentially high profile politico Joo Seong-jik (Kim Hong-pa, Seobok), taps Yeong-il and his crew to bump off her father who she wants dead for… reasons. The old guy is embroiled in a slush fund scandal, making the creation of an accident sketchier. Not helping matters is some persistent snooping by Lee Chi-hyeon (Lee Moo-saeng, Citizen of a Kind), an insurance broker specialising in accidental deaths, and a cop investigating something or other, Yang Kyeong-jin (Kim Shin-rok).
But wait, there’s more. The accident-causing crew this time is made up of Wol-cheon (Lee Hyun-wook) who is either trans or simply a master of disguise, the rookie Jeom-man (Tang Jun-sang), and Jackie (OG Korean wave star Lee Mi-sook, An Affair, Untold Scandal) a Vietnam War survivor … because reasons. Plus (stop already!) the spectre of a rival Accident Assassination gang looms. It’s a lot of unnecessary plates to keep spinning, and where Cheang internalised the action and signalled Brain’s every dark step with hard shadows and stark light, Lee doesn’t have that noir style skill in his arsenal. So he goes for bigger, increasingly lunatic and flabbergasting accident set pieces. And noisy. Did I mention noisy?
You’d think Accident would be catnip to producers looking for high concept thriller ideas. It’s anonymous enough to take place anywhere – Hong Kong, Seoul, Chicago, London, all would work – and The Conversation-type spiral into paranoia is the kind of juicy role actors love. And a lot’s happened since 2009, so the material to puff up the story with that aforementioned emergence of social media as a news source and the conspiracy-fuelled distrust of public institutions (Joo is up for a prosecutor’s gig) is there. But it was the private mania that made Accident work so well, as well its main theme. It wasn’t about distrust of media or government: it was about distrust of those closest to us. Giving The Plot an external bogeyman (maybe? I’m truly unsure) dilutes the story. Yeah, we know. Buddy’s paranoid and seeing enemies at every turn, but the personal stakes made Koo’s unwinding that much more believable. Yeong-il has too many herrings to chase, red or otherwise. And not to dunk on one guy, but Gang’s agonisingly bland turn as Yeong-il only dilutes it further. It’s amazing a guy known for co-starring in Peninsula, Train to Busan and 1987: When the Day Comes is so utterly unrecognisable. I get actors want to vanish into their roles but there’s a limit, and Gang just hit it. — DEK