LKFF 2022: Kingmaker

Kingmaker 킹메이커

DIRECTOR: BYUN SUNG-HYUN

WRITER: BYUN SUNG-HYUN, KIM MIN-SOO

PRODUCER: PARK JUN-HO

CAST: SUL KYOUNG-GU, LEE SUN-KYUN, YU JAE-MYEONG, JO WOO-JIN, PARK IN-HWAN

RAMA / 2021 / 123 MIN / CERT. 15

In 2017, the London Korean Film Festival screened Byun Sung-hyun’s double-dealing, chronology-crossing neo-noir The Merciless - and now Byun returns with the latest that he has directed, co-written with regular collaborator Kim Min-soo: a saga of aspiration and ambition, backroom deals and betrayal, all powered by two excellent performances. Set mostly during the dictatorship of Korea’s third president Park Chung-hee (1963-1979), this tense political period piece tracks the rise of Kim Woon-bum (Sul Kyung-gu) from backwater labour activist to Presidential nominee of the opposition New Democratic party, helped all the way by his Machiavellian man in the shadows Seo Chang-dae (Lee Sun-kyun). In these turbulent, often hopeless times, the film offers a dialectic between Kim’s idealism and Seo’s cynical pragmatism, between ends and means, and between lofty principles and the manipulative spin used to communicate (and compromise) them.