BIG SCREEN: The President's Last Bang

On October 26, 1979, South Korean President Park Chung-hee, along with Secretary Chang of the South Korean Secret Service and several SS officers, was brutally shot and killed. Though North Korea had attempted to assassinate the South Korean president a few years earlier, Park’s neighbors to the north had nothing to do with his demise. Instead, the death blow was delivered from within his own cabinet. South Korean CIA Director Kim Jaegyu, a longtime confidant of President Park’s, led the inchoate, albeit successful, perpetration against President Park. Kim’s uprising is the subject of Lim Sang-soo’s film The President’s Last Bang.

Even though writer/director Lim’s movie is darkly humorous affair, the factual nature of Park’s massacre prohibits the film being written off as merely a comedy. Lim, assuming the role of revisionist historian, would have us believe that President Park (Song Jae-ho) was less of a political bull than he was a buffoon. Most encyclopedic references regard Park as a military dogmatist, an economic savior, or a staunchly anti-democratic, anti-communistic dictator. Lim regards the man as a lascivious drunk.

The President’s Last Bang is heavily influenced by the stylized works of crime by the likes of John Wu and Quention Tarantino, however The President’s Last Bang isn’t weighed down by genre-typifying mobster idolatry. Instead, the film addresses the tenuous nature of eyewitness recollections and textbook renditions of insurgency, and indiscriminately exposes the weaknesses of the presidential cabinet as well as those of the assassins.

The world of The President’s Last Bang is an irresolute one, a land filled with political goons hardly qualified to run a bake sale, much less a country. Chief Secretary Yang (Kwon Byunggil) is introduced as the “secretary of the liquor cabinet .” Secretary Cha (Won-jung Jeong) struts around casually with no pants. Both men are poor political appointees; Cha is a brutish slob and Yang is an obsequious slug. KCIA Chief Ju (Han Seok-Kyu) chews too much gum. And Director Kim has chronic bad breath.

As Secretaries Cha and Yang, and Director Kim dine with the president, Director Kim becomes increasingly agitated with talk of politics until he can take no more. Colluding with Chief Ju and the stoic Colonel Min (Kim Eung-soo), Kim orders the assassination of the president. Without really knowing why, Ju and Min follow their superiors orders.

The extremes with which Lim depicts President Park are both humorous and widely contested, but the The President’s Last Bang is a sly and crafty film. It is satirical without slipping into slapstick or parody. President Park is seen not only as a lout who used Korean intelligence officers to taxi around his mistresses, but also a man who constantly deferred to the Japanese who had once occupied his country. Despite domestic opposition and mild censorship of the film, Lim insists his picture is a faithful representation of both characters and events.

Lim does a wonderful job creating confusion amongst the ranks of the assassins, even going so far as to blur the motivational charge behind the murders. Whether Director Kim orders the hit out of desperation for a more democratic nation, or in response to the president’s waning favor with the populace en masse, or simply due to mental fatigue and wavering sanity, the assassination of President Park seems, paradoxically, both senseless and imperative.

The only shortcoming of The President’s Last Bang is that the source material itself is not as riveting as the events inspiring films such as Dog Day Afternoon and JFK. However, as an alternative to the trite musings of Mossoud assassins in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, The President’s Last Bang explores the insecurities and temerity of politically motivated murder from a slightly more artful, and less maudlin, perspective.

Rating: Worth Sitting Up For

The above originally appeared in a slightly altered form in Crosswinds Weekly, Jan. 4 - Jan. 11.