With this I've seen all of Chan-wook Park's films from the 2000s. He's one of my very favorite filmmakers from the last decade. I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay is easily the least of them. The big problem, for me, anyway, is that it represents a genre of films that I really don't care for, that is, the mental hospital picture. Popularized by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it's the kind of film about a bunch of overly quirky patients who do crazy things. This one is also a romantic comedy, so that kind of makes it even worse. Fortunately, Park's unique sensibilities make this film at least somewhat worth watching. Su-jeong Lim plays a girl who was raised as a mouse by her grandmother. As a young adult, she started to believe she was a cyborg who as built to rescue her grandmother, who was taken away by the "white 'uns" (i.e., mental health professionals). She gets herself admitted and hopes to one day kill all of the white 'uns, but her own sympathy is keeping her back (after all, the white 'uns have grandmothers, too). Another patient (Rain, who starred in last year's action flick Ninja Assassin), is a kleptomaniac and Lim asks him to steal her sympathy so she can go through with the murder and mayhem. Just describing it makes me wonder how I liked it at all, but, trust me, Park's musical rhythms and candy-colored visuals are pretty delightful. Lim in particular is fantastic, but the whole cast shines. If you can get past the genre clichés, it's worth a watch.
Review of I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK
