Award winning director Im Sang-soo (A Good Lawyer’s Wife, The Old Garden)’s first film to be released on DVD in the UK is based on the events that occurred before and after the 1979 assassination of South Korean President and brutal dictator Park Chung-hee. Im Sang-soo has caused extreme controversy in Korea with this almost joke portrayal of the former president; no wonder Park Chung-hee’s son filed a lawsuit to remove the nearly 4 minutes of documentary footage used in the film.

The President’s Last Bang (released uncensored on DVD for the first time by Third Window Films) focuses on Korean CIA Director Kim (Baek Yun-shik), whose distaste for the president’s un-PC life of binge drinking, young girls and love of Japanese culture, leads him to plot to kill him. The assassination, a pivotal moment in modern South Korean history, will take place during a debauched private dinner party Park is hosting and covered up as the work of North Korean agents. But things don’t go according to plan, and the end result is a deliciously dark and subversive masterpiece. After the assassination one of the President’s female escorts says: “I thought they we’re putting on a show”, which might just be the perfect line to describe the film as a whole.

Although definitely a thriller, this film adds an extra (and unrelenting) slab of satirical comedy, making it one of the most unique films yet made about an important political event. It’s somewhat akin to imagining the English civil war being fought by a troupe of clowns. Director Im Sang-soo manages to create a dark atmosphere surrounding the demise of the president, whilst at the same time pokes fun at every character in the film; even a scene of Director Kim sitting on the toilet is added to bring grim humour to a very serious situation. In another scene a man is being interrogated and confesses to owning a print of a Picasso painting, leading the interrogator to shout at him because Picasso was apparently a communist, (Since world war II North Korea has become a communist democracy and South Korea a westernised republic.) It is this type of political humour that runs through the entire film.

With quick transitions between scenes and many smooth tracking shots linking different events, the style and pace of The President’s Last Bang is very similar to work of fellow Korean director Chan-wook Park (Old Boy, I’m a Cyborg.) Accompanied by a superb soundtrack and effortless acting the film is an extremely gripping watch. The best thing about this film however, is its moral ambiguity and the fact that the director has managed to show every character as corrupt in some way, and even the heroic assassin finds time to fall down the stairs on the way to his date with destiny in an inspired and irreverent moment of slapstick. Although rigid state censorship was lifted in 1993 thanks to the return of civilian, democratic rule (a result helped along by the events depicted in the film), even so showing South Korea’s past in such a corrupt light was a very brave and, I think, very important step.

Words > Ryan Harding