A Bloody Aria

A Bloody Aria is the second film by director Won Shin Yeon, who was responsible for the atrocious horror flick The Wig. This is a much better effort, but with mixed feelings. A music professor, Park Young-sun takes his student, In Jeong, to the countryside, driving a new, white Mercades. In Jeong is a pretty female singer who confesses to haviong a crush on the professor, and it is clear the Park Young-sun's intentions are not noble. As they sit by a campfire, he attempts to force himself on her. In Jeong fights him off and flees, repulsed by his amorous attempt. Park Young-sun encounters a group of men who seem menacing and yet are initially friendly to him. His car is stuck in the sand. A man picks up the student on the road, and brings her back to the site. There they try to move the car, but the wheels have dug too deep into the ground. The men cook some pork. All this time, there is a large bag that clearly has someone inside it. The professor and the student realize that these men are not good people, and that their leader is a mentally unstable person. The bag is exposed and a young male student pours out, bloodied and beaten. He is humiliated in front of the woman, who tries to escape but is caught by the men and dragged into the car to be raped. The leader forces the professor and the student to fight it out, the result leading to the possible freedom of one of them and the woman. The boy snaps, defeating the professor and proceeds to knock out the gang, and rescues the woman. The professor flees, finding a phone and calling the police. A cop comes, and takes him back to the site, where they find it completely empty. After defeating the gang, the boy was prepared to kill them all but In Jeong stops him. The leader recovers, and captures them both, tossing them both in the trunk. But the boy has a gun and shoots in the trunk. The cop hears this and he and the professor go and confront the gang, where it becomes apparent that the leader and the cop knew each other a long time ago, and that the boy is the cop's brother. The movies ends with the gang captured and the professor and the woman being towed home in the car.

This has been described as a Korean Deliverance, but I don't see that. The central plot, of the gang vs the boy vs the cop, with the professor and the student as unlucky observers, is fine. But the men aren't exactly local yokels with an axe to grind against big city folk, they are just thugs whose leader has a specific goal in mind for dealing with the boy, as a retaliation for what happened between him and the big brother cop long ago. The one location film is a good idea, feeling like a play. The acting is solid, but with the exception of the woman and the boy I don't connect with any of the other characters, who are just unlikeable. Perhaps this disconnect leads me to have an unsatisfied feeling at the end of the movie. The story is interesting, and there are moments of nail biting tension, but the pay off feels so unsatisfying. I have no feeling towards this film one way or another.