Here Come the Koreans

Acclaimed foreign directors have always made thir way to Hollywood after their early successes, in order to try their hand at breaking into mainstream movies. 2013 will have no shortage of them, including "Dead Man Down," an action movie from Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish version of "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," and the crime drama "Prisoners" from Denis Villeneuve, director of "Incendies." However, the biggest story this year may be a trio of well-regarded South Korean directors, who are all making their English language debuts in 2013.

First up we have "The Last Stand," the Arnold Schwarzenegger comeback vehicle opening this week. The director is Kim Ji-woon, best known for his genre films "A Tale of Two Sisters," "A Bittersweet Life," and "I Saw the Devil." Schwarzenegger plays a small town sheriff who ends up in the middle of a bad situation, resulting in your usual over-the-top action movie scenario. This seems appropriate for a director whose past efforts have frequently had lots and lots of highly stylized violence. There's nothing too fancy or ambitious going on here, but early reviews have been decent.

Then in March comes "Stoker," directed by Park Chan-Wook, one of the most celebrated South Korean directors in recent memory. His Vengeance Trilogy films have become cult favorites Stateside. An English language remake of the most famous of them, "Oldboy," is being prepared by Spike Lee for a fall release. "Stoker" has been described as a psychological thriller and family drama that will star Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska as a troubled mother and daughter pair. The plot has been kept pretty tightly under wraps, but screenwriter Wentworth Miller has insisted that it has nothing to do with vampires. However, with Park at the helm, expectations are high.

Finally there's "Snowpiercer," Bong Joon-ho's science fiction thriller that doesn't have a release date yet, but filming was finished as of last summer, and early marketing materials were being circulated by the Weinstein Company earlier this month. It's expected to debut some time in late 2013. Based on the French graphic novel "Le Transperceneige," the film will be a dystopian action film about the remnants of humanity surviving aboard a perpetually running train. The star-studded cast will include Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, and John Hurt. Of the three South Korean directors , Bong Joon-ho has the shortest but most diverse resume, including memorable monster movie "The Host," and crime thrillers "Memories of Murder" and "Mother."

What I find the most encouraging, looking at these new films, is that they're all original stories. None of them is a reboot, remake, sequel, or even part of an existing franchise. Sure, "The Last Stand" is clearly the kind of by-the-book action film you'd expect Arnold Schwarzenegger to be appearing in, but that still gives Kim Ji-woon a lot of room to maneuver and distinguish himself. Meanwhile "Stoker," which will premiere at Sundance in a few weeks, looks reassuringly like a Park Chan-Wook film, and is even being marketed as a new movie "From the Director of 'Oldboy.'" There's not much information about "Snowpiercer" yet, but the very nature of the project, a Korean co-production, suggests Bong Joon-ho retained a good amount of creative control. Everybody's getting a real shot here at the big time here, and I'm highly anticipating the results.

Of course the success of Kim Ji-woon, Park Chan-Wook, and Bong Joon-ho is no sure thing. Foreign directors have a mixed record when it comes to transitioning to Hollywood-style films. They face language barriers, culture barriers, industry barriers, and all sorts of other filmmaking challenges. For every success story like "Life of Pi" director Ang Lee, we have a Wong Kar-Wai or a John Woo who just never got much traction with their English-language efforts. Wong and Woo went back to making films in China, with no real harm done. Then again, there are those directors who don't get over bad their experiences with Hollywood, like poor Michelangelo Antonioni, who never recovered from the disaster of "Zabriskie Point." And remember all those Japanese horror directors who washed out a few years back?

However, there's always the chance that the next foreign director who arrives on the scene could be the next Fritz Lang or Billy Wilder or Guillermo Del Toro, who all began their careers making foreign language films. American is an immigrant nation, and that certainly holds true for our film industry too. Without the regular influx of the Paul Verhoevens and Lasse Hallstroms and Alfonso Cuarons, American cinema would look very different. The Korean film industry has dependably produced some of the most exciting titles in recent years, so I'm glad to see some of its best and brightest making the trek to Hollywood to see how far their ambitions can take them.
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