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The notion of history as remote and impersonal gets a forceful if slightly off-target knee to the groin from The President’s Last Bang, Im Sang Soo’s caustic, farcical reimagining of the 1979 assassination of South Korean President Park Chungee by the director of the Korean CIA. At his more successful moments, Im’s potty mouth and black-tinted, muckraking satire form a multilayered revisionist history: his staging of the appointment of an acting President arranges the Korean cabinet in a chattering semi-circle around Park’s naked corpse, an army official’s hat covering his genitals; the ceremony is witnessed by two KCIA agents watching through a window, too surprised to chew the noodles hanging out of their mouths.
Im unfortunately indulges in the weaknesses that bog down lesser K-thrillers — most egregiously, CGI-enhanced crane shots linger over splattered blood — but maybe that’s appropriate: if the making of history is a flawed process, so too is the documenting of it.
Opens October 14 at ImaginAsian
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