Time Renegades
Director: Kwak Jae-young
Year: 2016
Rating: 7.0
Country: Korea
Time displacement films always work
with me and seemingly with Korean audiences as well. Il Mare and Ditto come
to mind with people in different time periods managing to communicate with
one another. In Il Mare it was through a magic mailbox, with amateur radio
in Ditto. Here it is through dreaming. There is also the aspect of changing
the past with future knowledge. That is always a tricky proposition. But
hard to resist. Who would not do it if they could? Especially to save the
life of the woman you love. To hell with the edict to never change the past
because you have no idea what effect on the present it will have.
Ji-hwan (Jo Sung-suk) and Gun-woo (Lee Jun-wook)
are both individually at an outdoor New Year celebration when they each get
stabbed in the stomach and nearly die. But Ji-hwan is in the year 1983 while
Gun-woo is in 2015. Afterwards they begin to dream of each other and almost
to each other. Gun-woo is a cop, while Ji-hwan is a teacher in love with
a fellow teacher Yoon-jung (Im Soo-jung - A Tale of Two Sisters, I'm a Cyborg
but That's Ok). Initially, though confused, the two men begin to think this
is pretty cool as they trade information back and forth across the years.
Especially for Ji-Hwan as he is able to relay to students things that are
going to happen.
But then things turn very dark as Gun-woo
comes across the dead file case of Yoon-jung being murdered by slicing her
throat. Gun-woo let's Ji-hwan know that his girl is going to be murdered
and what day and where but it is too late to save her. It becomes part slasher
film as more girls are killed and Gun-woo knows the killer is never caught.
Then Gun-woo sees a girl, stalks her, is accused of being a pervert - but
she looks exactly like Yoon-jung did (played of course by the same actress).
The two of them start to fall in love and try to figure out what is happening.
She teaches at the same school as Yoon-jung did. It all gets interwoven as
Gun-woo tries to give info to stop all the other murders - but as in all
slasher films, he is hard to catch and harder to kill.
Jumping back and forth between time gets
a bit bewildering at times and more complications are introduced into the
film and then it becomes essential that the past be changed. Pretty enjoyable
as long as you buy into the whole premise and don't expect a lot of logic
or common sense. Good performances all around and always a pleasure to see
Im Soo-jung again - I am a huge fan of A Tale of Two Sisters (she is the
older sister). The director is Kwak Jae-young who has a pretty good record
of romances with My Sassy Girl, The Classic and Windstruck. He hits
a perfect note with the ending.
