Wednesday, February 14, 2018

LUCK-KEY (2016) *** ½


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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