Flashback 100 Years of Korean Cinema Ryu Seung-wan
<34> Ryu Seung-wan, who directed the 10 million box office hit in ‘Action Kid’
Dead or Alive (2000) was a landmark event in Korean independent cinema.
At a time when feature-length independent films had dried up since “Strike Eve” (1990) and action films were not yet recognized as a mainstream genre, this remarkable debut film, shot on a low budget of 65 million won ($46,000), instantly established “action kid” Ryu Seung-wan (46) as a super rookie from Chungmuro.
It all started with a screenplay titled “Hardboiled”.
After making the short film “Changeling Head” (1996), Ryu, who had worked as a director on films such as Park Chan-wook’s “Triplets” (1997), Park Ki-hyung’s “Schoolgirl Ghost Story” (1998), and Kwak Kyung-taek’s “Dr. K” (1999), was preparing for his directorial debut in between part-time jobs.
However, no producers were willing to back the newcomer’s feature debut, so Ryu’s only option was to split the movie into episodes.
He envisioned an omnibus movie that would tell one big story in four episodes, and then, as he could afford it, put the pieces back together to form a cohesive whole.
◇The beginning of the Ryu Seung Wan myth
Jang’s “Fighting” (1998), shot with 16㎜ film left over from “Bad Movie” (1997), won the Best Film Award at the Busan Short Film Festival, and “Modern Man” (1999), which he made after being selected as a support director at the Indie Forum in 1999, won the Audience Award and Best Film Award at the Korean Independent Short Film Festival, paving the way for the film to be expanded into a full-fledged feature.
The horror concept “Nightmare” (2000) and “Dead or Bad” (2000), shot in black and white, completed the film.
Throughout the three-year production process, Liu’s guiding principle was a “hungry spirit”.
To make ends meet and pay the bills, he worked at a subway renovation site, attended a screening of “Fistfight” with his face red with cement poison, and was selling sweet potatoes with his brother Ryu Seung-beom when he got the call that “Modern Man” had made the cut.
The film was a series of guerrilla-style shoots, such as getting yelled at for filming in a pool hall run by a friend’s father, running away from Seodaemun Prison under tight deadlines, and filming the duel scene in “Modern Man” in the parking lot of assistant director Park Jung-jeong’s house, and the actors were passionate about filming despite having no guarantee.
Among them are cameos by director Lee Jang-ho, who makes a special appearance as Sung-bin’s father in the film, and cinematographer Jung Jung Jung-hoon, who later became the eyes and hands of Park Chan-wook from Oldboy (2003) to Lady (2016).
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Liu is currently preparing “Escape” (working title), which tells the true story of the South Korean and North Korean embassies during the Somali civil war in the 1990s.
Success or failure, Liu’s cinematic adventures are still a work in progress, as he’s used the lessons of his predecessors to guide his trajectory.