My Wife Is a Gangster 3 (Korea Version) VCD

The film follows Aryong (Shu Qi), the Chinese-Korean daughter of a Hong Kong gang boss (played by veteran Shaw Brothers and Better Tomorrow star Ti Lung) who is forced to flee to Korea for her own safety after making a major faux pas by stabbing one of her rivals. Upon her arrival she is placed under the protection of the underlings of one of her father's business partners, led by the incompetent Ki Chul (Lee Bum Soo, recently in the excellent City of Violence). Unfortunately, he and his equally useless henchmen are completely oblivious of the fact that Aryong is perfectly capable of beating them up with one hand tied behind her back, something which leads to all kind of trouble when her vicious enemies begin to close in. Complicating matters further is the fact that a young woman named Yeon Hee (Hyun Young, also in The Legend of Seven Cutter) hired as a translator takes on a distinctly mischievous personality, trying to turn the situation to her own advantage.

After a surprisingly convoluted set up, the film quickly settles into wackiness in the usual Korean comedy style, with lots of face pulling and jovial baseball bat beatings as the wretched gangsters try in vain to impress Aryong through a variety of odd schemes. Cultural and language gags are very much the order of the day, with a lot of the humour revolving around the translator's deliberate subversion of conversations, leading to all manner of silly misunderstandings. Although the film is never in any danger of being clever or subtle, it is amusing throughout, with director Cho managing to work in a few genuinely funny sequences and showing a good sense of timing. Thankfully, this makes up for the lack of action, which amounts to little more than a handful of brawls and slow-motion duels.

The film's greatest asset is undoubtedly its amiable charm, with its characters being a likeable or at least laughable bunch. Although Shu Qi does spend a lot of the film with her lips pursed, glowering with understandable disdain at the idiotic gangsters' antics, she gives a game and appealing performance, as does Lee Bum Soo, who shows an admirable lack of dignity in playing the fool. The supporting cast are similarly agreeable, with Hyun Young in particular on great comic form and providing the film with some of its funniest moments as the alternately dizzy and conniving translator.

Aside from a general lack of ambition, the film's only real flaw lies in the poorly handled relationship between Aryong and Ki Chul, which comes completely out of nowhere and which seems to have been thrown in as an ill-judged afterthought aimed at justifying the title. Indeed, many of the supposedly romantic scenes fall painfully flat, resembling bizarre forced courtship rituals which leave the viewer wholly confused as to whether the characters like each other or not - a case in point being a crazy, fully clothed in-car sex scene, complete with obligatory comedy breast grabbing, which the director seems to think constitutes an indication of sweetly blossoming love. This is not helped by the fact that neither Shu Qi nor Lee Bum Soo look even remotely interested in each other, and there is a definite sense of awkwardness to their scenes together. As a result, the inevitable third act dive into melodrama never works, and serves only to slow the pace, though this does make for a few unintentional laughs which help to prevent things from getting dull or maudlin.

To be fair, though unnecessary, the romantic subplot is by no means unexpected and My Wife is a Gangster 3 certainly succeeds in its modest aims, providing solid popcorn entertainment. Whilst more could have probably been done with the formula, the film is on a par with the two previous entries in the series and is well worth catching for fans of the stars or Korean comedy in general.

by James Mudge - BeyondHollywood.com