[HanCinema's Film Review] "Night in Paradise"

Tae-goo (played by Um Tae-goo) is introduced to us in fairly gangster fashion, both literally and figuratively, over the course of a job. "Night in Paradise" then transitions to him having a very bad day, ultimately deciding to improve it by making other people have similarly bad days in turn. All of this is laboriously set up to finally get Tae-goo to Jeju Island, where he meets Jae-yeon (played by Jeon Yeo-been), the niece of the weapons dealer Tae-goo intends to crash with en route to Russia.

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If there was any one word in that paragraph that should have grabbed your attention, it was laboriously. It takes director Park Hoon-jung an obnoxiously long time to do anything in terms of moving the plot forward. Yet for all that exposition, I still can't quite grasp what was even going on in this movie. Why Russia? On what arbitrary basis was Tae-goo assigning responsibility for the accident? Why do all the other gangsters care about Tae-goo so much when he's, like, just one guy?

Well, this is where the figuratively gangster aspect of the story kicks in. Despite spending nearly the entire runtime in a depressed stupor, Tae-goo is quite good at knife fighting, as well as being able to hold out a ridiculously long time in generally preposterous defensive situations. It helps, naturally, that the bad guys love to talk so much. When they're not talking to each other, they're talking to the people they should really just be killing. This causes them to be on the losing end of fights they should be winning easily even when their singular opponent isn't Tae-goo.

Speaking of which, Jae-yeon is the highlight of the movie for the same reason the rest of it is so thoroughly mediocre. She's allowed to wallow in mystery. Jae-yeon is, at different moments, taciturn, rude, suicidal, and exceptionally talented with a gun. It's never completely clear what Jae-yeon's deal is, but her depression is a worthy foil for Tae-goo. They both came to Jeju Island for their health, yet both are so thoroughly miserable they can't even pretend to enjoy the bleak scenery.

This perhaps inevitably makes their seeming love story rather unconvincing. While Jeon Yeo-been is good, off in her own little world, Um Tae-goo proves far more uninspiring in his half of the lead role. Part of this is just the script, which widely fluctuates between him doing nothing, engaging in an epic action scene, and having an emotional breakdown. But even bearing that in mind Tae-goo at best just seems not very smart.

Just watching the characters meander around Jeju Island without directly connecting their own poor life decisions to their own present day misery is exhausting. Indeed, Jeon Yeo-been, with her lack of a real character backstory, is the most compelling largely because director Park Hoon-jung allows her to communicate her ennui through acting rather than tedious explanations. "Night in Paradise" is overly long, poorly edited, and lacks bite. Even strong action scenes can't compensate for the trite melodrama.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Night in Paradise" is directed by Park Hoon-jung, and features Um Tae-goo, Jeon Yeo-been, Cha Seung-won, Lee Ki-young, Park Ho-san, Cho Dong-in. Release date: 2021/04/09.