Green Fish

A Korean crime drama. Makdong has just finished his military service. On the train he encounters a woman; she gets into trouble, he intervenes and is beaten. She leaves a red scarf behind. When he gets home his town is unrecognisable. There are housing blocks where the fields were, the family has scattered and nothing is as it was. He looks for work. He finds the woman from the train at a nightclub. She is the girlfriend of a gang boss named Bae Tae-gon. Makdong joins that gang. What the film is interested in is not crime but not belonging. Makdong belongs nowhere: he cannot return to the family and is a stranger in the gang. All he wants is to gather his brothers and open a restaurant, and he tells everyone so. The best-known scene is a phone call; the man describes his family in tears while the camera waits at a distance in a single take. Han Suk-kyu plays Makdong, Shim Hye-jin the woman and Moon Sung-keun the gang boss. Lee Chang-dong directed; his first film, and it is counted among the starting points of the renewal of Korean cinema in the 1990s. A strong example for anyone who likes Korean cinema and character-driven crime. For a viewer expecting action, the film moves calmly and violence appears in few scenes.