The Face Reader (2013)

[One Armed Boxer]

After the success of the 2012 Chuseok holiday blockbuster movie, the Lee Byung-hun starring period drama 'Masquerade' (a movie very much worthy of its success), it's understandable that the studios aimed for the same formula this year. 'The Face Reader' comes with an all-star cast, lead by Song Kang-ho, ably backed up by 'The Thieves' co-stars Lee Jeong-jae & Kim Hye-soo, with support ranging from veterans like Baek Yoon-sik ('Tazza') to pretty boys like Lee Jong-suk ('R2B: Return to Base').

Kang-ho stars as a down & out face reader, someone who can tell another's personality and misdemeanors just by looking at their face. Due to a disgraced family lineage, he now lives in a self imposed exile in the countryside with his brother-in-law and son, who has ambitions of restoring their family name and working for the government. After a visit from the madame of a prestigious brothel who wishes to enlist his services, Kang-ho soon finds himself back in the thick of things, and after inadvertently helping an official to solve a murder case, eventually gets enlisted by the king to help root out usurpers to the throne.

All of the elements are there for a gripping tale of Joseon era intrigue, however director Han Jae-rim managers to make the whole setup seem terminally dull thanks to some truly uninspiring direction. 'The Face Reader' should be a cinematic delight, and the production values in terms of sets and costume are certainly up there, but everything else comes across as plain and pedestrian, making it more like a 140 minute TV drama than a period blockbuster. Endless scenes of characters talking to each other to advance the plot, rather than letting the events which are unfolding speak for themselves, give way to more scenes of characters talking, all amounting to a wildly uneven mess.

Bad guy Lee Jeong-jae doesn't even appear until after the 1 hour mark, & Kim Hye-soo is wasted in a largely inconsequential role, which seems to serve only to ask Song-ho to come to the city within the first few minutes of the movie. After she does, we're mostly left with an hour of Song-ho and his brother-in-law, played by Jo Jeong-sok, irritatingly mugging and gurning their way through a variety of unamusing situations. By the time Jeong-jae does make an appearance, he's so ruthless and cunning that you almost end up rooting for him as the bad guy, so that the idiots who we're supposed to be getting behind will be forced to get serious.

Of course, eventually that's exactly what happens, but it's all a little too late. Around the 1:45 hour mark the tone takes a jarring shift, as in not entirely unusual with these types of Korean movies, into melodrama, were almost every character has their chance to writhe on the floor while emoting the waterworks and yelling for what at times seems like minutes. However the sluggish leadup to such an emotional barrage doesn't justify us having any connection to it, meaning it all comes across as a little ridiculous and contrived. Characters suddenly die and it's hard to care, even more so when you realize that there's still over 30 minutes to go.

All in all 'The Face Reader' should have been so much more than it is. For me the blame lies largely with director Jae-rim, only his third movie after making 'Rules of Dating' & 'The Show Must Go On' back to back in 2005 & 2006 respectively, and the first time working from a script which isn't his own, he doesn't seem to be aware of how to present the material he's working with in an exciting or gripping manner. The very fact that for a movie called 'The Face Reader', at the end of 140 minutes we still know next to nothing about what face reading actually is, should tell you how poorly such a promising concept has been handled.

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