Face (2004)

A Brilliant Conflict

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I think I've come to that conclusion after watching a number of Japanese, Korean and Chinese horror movies, that you just don't need all that much to scare Asian audiences.The plot line is that there is an investigation into the disappearances of girls where only their bones are found. Someone is harvesting their hearts and then boiling the bodies in acid to hide the crime. The center of the story is a criminal pathologist who reconstructs faces of dead girls from their skulls, but his daughter received a heart transplant from an unknown source. He is haunted by a not particularly scary ghost into finding the killer! Again, if you saw Ringu, or movies of that ilk, you get the flavor of what is going on here. Or you can just wait for the American ripoff with some blonde actress.

I just took about 6 shots of Belvedere (vodka) while watching this movie. I'm on my 8th shot now...or 9th...I lost count. This is my first review while under the influence of alcohol...but I probably have better spelling and grammar than 95% of America.Anyway...the acting in this movie is fine. It's a foreign language to me so I can't truly tell if the acting is good or not but from body language and facial expressions, it's fine to me. As always, as I always say, it's a horror movie so there's not a lot of skill required to portray the roles.Atmosphere was also well done. I don't can't remember a scene where the music was off or the camera angles should've been better selected. The whole mood of the movie was well set and well-paced.The negative side of this movie is that I did not feel a lot of emotions. This movie was quite bland to me...or it could've been the six shots of Belvedere. Either way, I was emotionless throughout the movie. I DID feel for the young girl for having a bad heart...I'm not so cold-hearted.I'd skip this movie. For Asian horror, it sucked. Ringu still reigns champion in my book for Asian horror. That and Sick Nurses...those two movies are the epitome of Asian horror to me. I have a bunch of other movies to watch tonight...yes, I'm buzzing, but can't wait to see the other movies. Either that or I'm going to seriously reinstall my World of Warcraft and get some PvP points!!

"Face" is an extremely underwhelming genre-mixture that doesn't do enough for either.**SPOILERS**Tired of working a case, Det. Lee Hyun-min, (Shin Hyeon-jun) resigns so he can spend time with his ailing daughter Jin, (Kim Seung-wook) who has just received a heart transplant. Trying to help her, Jung Sun-young, (Song Yun-ah) arrives to ask his help for a police case in reconstructing an unidentified victim's face. As they continue their assignment together, he becomes worried when her condition becomes more severe, and suspects there might be more to the story behind it. Driven by research, he finds something sinister occurring that involves her surgeon and a secret organ-donating ring that supplies organs from runaways to surgery patients, and they all race to stop their actions before they can happen again.The Good News: There was some good stuff to this one. One of the best parts is that it features some really good attacks from the ghost where it gets somewhat exciting. There's a really brutal surgery scene in the beginning, where the bound victim is seen to be cut open with a scalpel, while still alive, and is then maneuvered in such a way as to appear that a series of inner organs had been removed during the process, which just makes it all the more creepy. Another surgery scene, only one that doesn't involve the brutality of the earlier scene, is just as good and actually has some rather uneasy moments to it. There's also a rather creepy scene where, while stopping at a railroad stop, a vision of a young girl being run over by a train completely unaware of the situation before seeing a series of dismembered body parts fly by before a vision of the disembodied head lands on top of the car and winks, which makes for a startling scene. This one even has a top-notch regeneration scene within that looks incredibly well-done and freaky, with the disjointed movements knocking the body into position, the complete inability to determine what it looks like before the finale and a just overall outstanding scene make for a fun time to be had. Perhaps what makes the scene all the best, though, is the fact that it manages to do the whole thing during a thunderstorm outside, which automatically makes it even creepier than it should be and makes the scene all the more striking. The way the mystery is built up in here is also quite nice, as the different elements seem to have very little in common but are woven together quite nicely, making for a well-designed if slow-building story. The last plus here is the finale, which is a lot of fun. From a full-on brawl to a series of close-calls on an operating table and the final shootout that results in a graphic demise, this ending here is pretty exciting and gets a lot going for it. These here are what work for the film.The Bad News: There was a couple of rather big flaws to this one that hold it down. One of the biggest issues is that the film is just so slow-paced that it's hard to get excited for anything in here. The beginning is mostly held up with the detective angle, which is mostly because it just consists of endless scenes of his working on a clay sculpture of a human head lecturing those around him about whatever pops into his head, from his daughter's condition to the finer exploits of the profession, and none of them are particularly interesting. They take up so much time in the beginning that there's no time at all for anything creepy to happen, unless a viewer is slightly unnerved by the sight of a human face without the skin attached. The extended nature of these scenes is where it goes down-hill, due to the fact that they take up so much of the time that there's just nothing left for any fun scenes to take over, which is how these fail. Also taking up a lot of time in the film is the rather cliché and totally unnecessary romance between the leads, which is not only found in just about most of these films anyway but is done so haphazardly that nothing makes any sense as to why it would start. It's just completely unneeded and doesn't add anything to the film without having anything important being added to the film. The last flaw to this is the film's rather dull detective angle. Due to the fact that the other detectives are running around with the information manages to really slow this one down when it needed to pick up the pace, and these scenes really just slow the film down. These here are the problems.The Final Verdict: A not entirely-spectacular ghost entry mixed with a detective film, making a film that's too slow for a ghost film and too dull for a detective film. Really only give this one a shot if you're into the style of thee or just curious, while those who are much more on-the-fence should heed caution.Rated UR/R: Graphic Violence and Language

A father, traumatized by the illness of his daughter is asked to help the police reconstruct the face of yet another victim of a serial killer. Unable to cope he at first he refuses but visitations by the ghost of the victim and the need to find out where his daughters transplanted heart may have come from, he begins to try to give life to the dead.I really like this movie. Not really a horror film but more a drama with very strong supernatural overtones, Face has a few scares but is mostly a really good police drama. I know that many people expecting a balls to the wall fright fest have are disappointed but this quiet little film is a wonderful change of pace. Indeed the monsters here are human and the ghosts are merely victims. Those looking for something like Ju-On, Ringu or other overt horror films should look elsewhere since this isn't that sort of movie. More concerned with character and the mystery at hand, this is a really good change of pace. To its credit the film did make me jump three or four times, so there are some scares to be found, however more importantly this movie made me care about the characters and what was happening.There is little to quibble about, pretty much everything in this movie works, its only flaw being a confused time frame towards the end.See this movie. Just because its not a traditional horror movie doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the time to see it. Its simply a really good change of pace. 8 out of 10. Put it onto the list of must sees.