REWIND

5/10

Videoreul boneun namja: (South) Korea 2003 : KIM Hak-Soon : 98 mins

[PLAY]    Re Rewind: will the crowd say "Bo! Selecta!"? It's hard to imagine Kim's debut provoking any especially vociferous responses, either positive or negative. Because this lukewarm cross between High Fidelity, Laundry and the quieter moments of Full-Time Killer is a pleasant, gently droll, eminently forgettable way of spending ninety-odd minutes in a cinema. Or rather, ninety-odd minutes at home watching the picture on video or DVD. Because although shot (rather blandly) on celluloid, the small screen is the natural format for Rewind, the amiable tale of a bloke (Chang Hyun-Sung) who runs a small, independent video-store. We never learn his name, but do we discover he was once a lawyer who has just gone through a divorce. Pleasant and quite good-looking in a John Cusackish sort of way, he attracts plenty of attention from his predominantly female staff. Among the many posters around the shop, the eagle-eyed may notice Jean-Claude Van Damme's Inferno, with the tagline "HE LOST THE WILL TO LIVE - NOW HE'S FIGHTING TO GET IT BACK!" Our hero wouldn't dream of deploying JCV-D's brand of kick-ass [STOP]    [FAST-FORWARD]    [PLAY] coasts on low-key humour for an hour or so, with a tinkly piano soundtrack to emphasise just how damned charming and bittersweet it all is. But the second half bogs down with an excess of semi-spooky dream-sequences [PAUSE]

[PLAY] before just... petering... out. [STOP]    [EJECT]

10th September, 2004
(seen 24th August : FilmHouse Edinburgh : public show - Edinburgh Film Festival)

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by Neil Young

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