Jae-sung
(Joon Lee) is a suicidal actor who stumbles upon an unconscious man (Hae-jin
Yoo) in a bathhouse. Eager for a new
life, Jae-sung switches locker keys with the man, who judging by his clothes
and car appears to be extremely wealthy.
When the guy finally comes around, he’s suffering from amnesia and
accepts his new life as a struggling actor easily enough. Jae-sung on the other hand slowly realizes
his new identity isn’t what it appears to be.
He eventually figures out he’s a hitman and that his target is his
next-door neighbor, a girl he’s already fallen head over heels for.
From
the set-up, you’d fully expect Luck-Key to be an obvious action comedy, but
there’s surprisingly little action in it.
Much of the film is dependent on the two men growing into their new
identities. Predictably, they have to
find each other and work together to straighten their lives out in the third
act. Even these scenes refuse to give into
convention and cliché, managing to surprise the audience at every turn.
The
performances are solid across the board.
We spend a great deal of time with both Lee and Yoo and get to know what
makes their characters tick. When Yoo’s
career starts taking off, we’re rooting for him, even though we know he’ll have
to get back to his job as a hitman eventually.
Although
the dual struggles between the characters is often amusing, honestly this runs about
ten minutes too long. Some of the Meet
Cute stuff with the heroes’ respective girlfriends sometimes drags the pace
down and could’ve easily been trimmed.
However, this is a relatively minor quibble in the long run.
Luck-Key
is proof that you don’t need a lot of action and violence to keep a plot about
a hitman afloat. In fact, it’s the
lengths Yoo goes through to NOT kill anyone that makes his character so
endearing. This is the rare movie in which
the humor comes out of the characters’ decisions and conflicting
personalities. Maybe more Hollywood
productions should take a cue from it.
AKA: Key of Life.
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