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Teenage Hooker Became Killing Machine in Daehakroh
Crazy cyborg prostitute kills people 
Studio: Image Entertainment Format: Movie Released: 2000 Written by: Face 
Teenage Hooker is more like an hour long minute music video featuring Cherry Bikini and the Supreme Beings of Leisure in some sacrilegious dystopian future than it is a feature film. Not that such a video would ever be a bad thing, but Nam Ki-Woong distorts the notion into nothing more than a grandstand play, showcasing sixty minutes of unintelligible sexploitation... oh... and not to mention the occasional gross-out moment.
The plot of this film can actually be derived from the title (you know what... I wouldn't doubt if that was how it originally came about now that I think about it--but that is neither here nor there). Nevertheless, the story is about a teenage hooker who is impregnated by one of her many teachers with whom she has fallen in love. This teacher is special to her, special enough to be given the 50 grand special for free even. However, her lover rashly kills her one night, and subsequently her baby as well; after being chopped into pieces, a mad scientist recovers the remains and reincarnates her into a killing machine cyborg! Now that she has been given the gift of... cyberlife... fueled by memories of her horrific death she decides it's time for revenge! Everything about this movie feels second-rate and meretriciously adorned--in more ways than one. The lighting is composed of neon flashes and overtly glaring streetlights that scream déclassé not artful. The camera work is tight and shakey, comprised mostly of facial close ups and a lack of intendment--it's as though Ki-Woong spun the camera man (which was actually a 4 year old boy with ADHD) on a merry-go-round until he could barely stand, then instructed him to randomly and unintentionally shoot whatever was bright and annoying. The direction itself is cumbersome... Ki-Woong meanders without focus in an attempt to give his work a subversive cadence, but the end result is more similar to that of an almost jokingly underground aesthetic. Ki-Woong has established himself as a director rife with impropriety. His two subsequent works, Chow Yun-Fat Boy Meets Brownie Girl, and Never Belongs to Me go far beyond the work seen in his first attempt at feature filmmaking but are still plagued by the same problems. The real issue at hand is that he never succeeds in figuring out where he wants his narrative to travel. There is no clear message whatsoever; every glimmer of diction is derailed by obliquely unascertained social commentaries. Regrettably, Ki-Woong comes off as less of a filmmaker and more of a freakout technician. * (Deranged, superficial and pointless) Posted: March 8, 2008
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