Moss - Review
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""Moss" can broadly be categorised as obviously South Korean".
Director Kang Woo-suk takes on the fans of Yun Tae-ho's much lauded digital comic "Moss" in a gamble to fit a big story with big themes into a feature length film. Whether or not fans of the source material are satisfied with the final product, Woo-seok has delivered a thriller in the film noir tradition where the atmosphere lies heavy with buried secrets threatening to resurface.
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At Samdeok prayer house, more and more locals are coming to see and listen to the messianic Mr Yu before they lose themselves to a life of sin. Seeing an opportunity to use Mr Yu's strange gift for a higher purpose, the dubious and positively corrupt detective Cheon Yong-deok tells Mr Yu his big idea: to give a select few real criminals a proper rehabilitation that a jail sentence cannot provide.
Fast forward thirty years and, in a small isolated village, Mr Yu is dead. Surprising Chief Cheon Yong-Deok and his posse of elders is the arrival from Seoul of Mr Yu's son that no-one knew about, Yu Hae-kuk. Instantly rubbing everyone up just a little bit the wrong way with his big city manners and ideas, it becomes clear that no-one wants him around for long.
Hae-kuk, however, doesn't feel right about the circumstances surrounding the death of his estranged father. In a set up where everyone, including the police, answer to the Chief (whose house overlooks the entire village), a store-owning woman is visited individually by the elders every night and tunnels connect particular houses to his father's, Hae-kuk decides to stick around and do some investigating of his own. The further he delves, the grubbier the secrets and lies become, as he is immersed in a world of greed and human weakness... Full review here