Too much ego

Gook (d. Justin Chon)

The crux of the film is the shared loss of the Korean guys’ father and the African American’s mother. This is what is meant to connect the young Korean-American guys with the black teenage girl. We don’t get to hear much about the incident where they were both killed and it comes much later in the film. But this can be troublesome since it creates a false equivalency in terms of history as experienced by Korean immigrants and African Americans in the United States. Compounding to the problematic schema is the presence of the stereotypical young black male gangster who causes yet another violent loss between him and the storeowners. Chon riffs on the Latasha Harlins case by staging a verbally violent confrontation between the young black girl and the older Korean convenience store owner, and he carefully distinguishes between the older Korean guy and his younger counterparts who are more Americanized than Korean. In this way, Chon can be somewhat subtle about representing Korean immigrant experiences. The black and white cinematography works in creating a dreamy L.A. centered near the working class portions of the South Bay Area. The film located the neighborhood in Paramount, but I could see Inglewood and Hawthorne too. But it’s also the color scheme of nightmare L.A. where overwrought acting by the film’s star/director in the climax can overwhelm whatever racial message of reconciliation it’s trying to push.

#2019 #37