Yun-ju (Lee Sung-jae) is an unemployed professor and lives in a depressing, shabby apartment complex. His pregnant wife is the breadwinner, while Yun-ju sits brooding at home, tries to figure out, how to get the money to bribe his way into a job - and gets slowly mad over the constant yelping and barking of a dog somewhere in a neighboring flat.
One day he just snaps and decides to kill that noisy mutt. Alas, Yun-ju is not the greatest of he-men and lacks the true killer's instinct: Not only he gets the wrong doggie, but the poor mutt ends in the cooking pot of the delighted janitor. But at last Yun-ju catches the guilty dog and throws it from the roof – and is watched by Hyeon-nam (Bae Du-na), a bored young estate clerk in the apartment complex. Luckily he escapes unrecognized, but his troubles are not over: Hyeon-nam does the Sherlock thing and tries to find the presumed serial dog killer, and Yun-ju is confronted with his wife's new pet: a dog…
My main reason to watch this movie was Bae-Du Na. I enjoyed her tremendously in LINDA LINDA LINDA and wanted to see more of her. This was her second feature after THE RING VIRUS - and she is great in it. She plays a directionless, lazy and bored young woman who is nevertheless quite lovable, and she fills her role with a lot of life and realism.
Her counter-part, Lee Sung-jae is equally good in portraying the frustrated Yun-ju, while the rest of the cast has to work with more sketchy, caricaturesque roles. Most fun of them is the gourmet-janitor and dog lover (Byeon Hie-bong is the actor's name, I think). But the many, seemingly one-dimensional roles (I have to mention Hyeon-nam's chubby pal, who was a very nice and fun character) form a surprisingly complex picture of the "biotop" they live in.
The movie is equal parts social satire, comedy and drama. It often gets quite absurd and the it becomes touching or biting (but there are no biting dogs in this movie!). First time director Bong Joon-ho went on to make the critically acclaimed MEMORIES OF MURDER and the smash hit THE HOST (with Bae Du-na in an important supporting role). all of his films are more complex and deeper than you would expect from the genres, he works in (comedy, thriller, horror). All undermine these genres in a subtle way and all of them have at least a touch of absurdity to them. While HOST goes the most over the top and MEMORIES has the best characterizations and goes deepest, I prefer his debut. The movie carefully balances his different aspects and is, for me, his most entertaining work - even though I love dogs very dearly (and NOT in the way, the janitor does).
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