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Seung-min Oh (Tae-woong Eom) is a busy executive for a small talent agency trying to land its first big deal. They have a promising up and coming actress Jin-a (Se-na Lee) in their stable and Seung-min works this angle furiously. A cosmetic company has even called Seung-min about a possible endorsement deal with Jin-a. Meanwhile, Seung-min owes a large amount of money to loan sharks who are hounding him for payment. His wife, Jeong-yeon Kim (Jeong-yeon Kim), acts strangely detached from him. To make things even more chaotic for Seung-min, his prior business associate tries to extort money from Seung-min by threatening to release a sex video tape involving Seung-min and his client Jin-a! But, Seung-min is a a pit bull himself and isn’t the type to so easily fall prey to extortion. After paying the extortion fee in a upscale coffee shop, Seung-min follows his old business associate back to his apartment to retrieve his money and presumably any further copies of sex tape on his computer.
While leaving the apartment panic suddenly strickens Seung-min. Seung-min suddenly remembers that he left behind his cellphone back at the upscale coffee shop. Not only does his cellphone contain all his appointments & contacts, but also the sex video of himself and actress Jin-a. Seung-min. Seung-min and his helper quickly make a mad dash back to the cafe to retrieve the cellphone. When they arrive back at the cafe, Seung-min is sickened to learn that his cellphone is nowhere to be found. A few hours later, a mysterious person then calls Seung-min’s wife and claims to have found Seung-min’s phone.
And with that you have the beginning of a frenetic cat and mouse game between Seung-min and the mysterious person that retrieved Seung-min’s cellphone (played by Yong-woo Park). “Handphone” does deliver an excellent premise and follows through with one of the more interesting backgrounds on a sociopath you’ll find in Korean thrillers: A customer service manager at a local E*Mart (Korea’s equivalent of Wal-Mart). The movie deftly shows an excruciating level of crap that the manager has to endure from his customers and in turn he vents his anger upon Seung-min via inflicting psychological torture. All this works like a well-oiled machine and the movie flies through the first 90 minutes with compelling stuff. Unfortunately, “Handphone” just doesn’t know when to quit and tacks on a full 35 minutes of over-baked hokiness to ruin an otherwise excellent thriller. After Seung-min attacks Lee-gyu outside of E*Mart the movie should have ended there, but instead you get an onslaught of revelations and cheap pull the rug out from under you moments. All this hokiness sinks the movie from the high pedestal it stood for the most part of its runtime.
Tae-woong Eom constantly cursing (“ehhh shibal!”) strikes a believable persona of one completely pissed off individual. Yong-woo Park does a little bit of Kevin Spacey in his psychotic role, but all those moments in E*Mart worked well to give reason to his madness. Storywise the plot works well outside of the unneeded final 35 minutes, but the story also has one very large gaff. Early on in the film Lee-gyu informs Seung-min that the last four numbers of his cellphone matched his license plate number. Seung-min never followed through with the obvious: have his private investigators track down the person by his license plate (duh).
If you enjoyed recent Korean thrillers like “Rainbow Eyes,” “Seven Days,” and “Paradise Murdered” then you should quickly check out “Handphone.” For the first ¾’s of its runtime the movie delivers an intense level of fun, featuring an excellent combination of action, mystery, and suspense. The film is then marred by an absolutely unneeded 35 minutes of runtime. Nevertheless, if fast paced thrillers involving mind games interests you then check out “Handphone”.
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