It’s easy to see why Kim Hye-su is the most popular female actor in Korea. In a culture where a certain beauty standard dictates how women who spend their time in the public eye (not to mention men) are supposed to look, Kim’s distinctive, almost theatrical features—a full mouth and large, wide-set eyes—allow her to take on a broader range of parts, and she always puts them across. She can portray a professional woman of high position or a poverty-stricken object of abuse with equal credibility. In this lively action entertainment she plays a woman who has had to fend for herself since she was 14 and thus acquires a set of survival skills that are often identified with shysters and con men, attaching those skills to conventional feminine wiles. Since the movie takes place in the 70s, political correctness is not a problem (though it rarely is in Korean productions), and the director, veteran blockbuster master Ryoo Seung-wan, exaggerates the fashions and colloquialisms of the time to bring out the comic and ironic elements in the story. Kim, augmented with an array of flamboyantly coiffed wigs, just runs away with them.

Genre-wise, Smugglers is a crime caper, though one in which the central female characters are both perpetrators and victims. Kim plays Chun-ja, a woman who dives for abalone and sea urchin off the coast of a fictional town with half a dozen other women. In recent years, a chemical plant has started operating nearby, polluting the water and ruining the catch, so an enterprising truck driver suggests they dive for contraband. Ships pass through the area and often dump crates into the sea containing imported goods subject to customs tax. The women haul these crates up and the driver brings them to Seoul where the goods enter the black market. As with many period genre films, this one teaches you something about Korean history, namely how average people, especially merchants, relied on the black market in the 60s and 70s just to get by. Chun-ja and her best friend, fellow diver Jin-sook (Jung-Ah), whose father owns the boat they use, rake in the cash and, for a short while, at least, enjoy the related perks, but someone tips off the custom authorities, and the crew is busted in the act at sea. Even worse, Jin-sook’s father and brother are killed during the raid, while Chun-ja escapes into the sea, trailing rumors behind her that she was the one who squealed. Obviously, you can’t keep a woman like Chun-ja down, and she eventually becomes an independent black marketeer in Seoul, only to tread on the territory of the infamous smuggler Sergeant Kwon (Zo In-sung), who threatens to disfigure Chun-ja with the huge Bowie knife he once used to kill Vietnamese. Chun-ja convinces him that she can help him sidestep Busan, where much of his merchandise is confiscated by customs, by diverting it through her home town, but that means she has to go back and face the music orchestrated by Jin-sook, who still thinks she betrayed the divers. 

The script, by Ryoo and Kim Jeong-yeon, twists and turns without straining the viewer’s ability to suspend disbelief, and mostly rides on Chun-ja’s ability to the play the various bad guys—in addition to Kwon there’s a young deckhand-turned-punk-gangster and the avaricious head of local customs—against one another while trying to keep herself from being killed by Jin-sook and the other female divers. It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out that comeuppance is the main purpose of the dramatic development, and it works, climaxing in an action set piece at sea that includes guns, sharp objects, and sharks. You’ll never have a better time watching male assholes get theirs. 

In Korean. Opens July 12 in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011).

Smugglers home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Next Entertainment World & Filmmakers R&K