Zeroes to Heroes
Kang Hyoung-chul’s slapstick-y superhero origin romp finally makes it to screens two years late.
Hi-Five
Director: Kang Hyoung-chul • Writer: Kang Hyoung-chul
Starring: Lee Jae-in, Ahn Jae-hong, Ra Mi-ran, Yoo Ah-in, Kim Hie-won, Jinyoung
South Korea • 2hrs
Opens Hong Kong June 19 • IIA
Grade: C
Hi-Five | 하이파이브 is an aggressively cartoonish, not quite satirical, spin on the superhero sub-genre; a goofy tale of how five normies get zapped with superpowers when they each receive some kind of organ transplant (seriously, what’s with the organs this week?). Think of it kind of as Blink, or The Eye, or Body Parts, or Rabid (that’s one for the ages) merged with Spider-Man lore. Get a foreign body part, see the previous owner exert their influence on you.
Essentially an origin story and ostensibly a comedy, Hi-Five starts with a mysterious figure (no, we never know who this is) having their organs harvested for donation. In all, six parts go out: to Wan-seo (Lee Jae-in), the teen daughter of a taekwondo teacher (Oh Jung-se), who has a heart problem; proverbial basement-dwelling struggling writer Ji-sung (Ahn Jae-hong, Secret Zoo, Chicken Nugget), who gets a lung; Ki-dong (Yoo Ah-in, Burning), who gets new corneas; Yakult cart owner Sun-nyeo (Ra Mi-ran, Miss & Mrs Cops), who gets a kidney; the liver goes to construction engineer Yak-sun (Kim Hie-won, Project Silence); and nutty, youth-obsessed cult leader Seo Yeong-chun (Shin Gu) receives the pancreas.
Hi-Five takes a hyper-colourful path to its inevitable – some would say predictable - endgame, and makes some baffling choices for superpowers to give its characters. Won-seo and Yak-sun developer the ability to be really fast and strong (sure) and heal people (good, useful) but Ki-dong inherits the ability to… turn the power on and off with a (grating) snap? Okay that shit’s borderline, and Sun-nyeo is some kind of conduit, an extension cord of sorts. Also borderline. Hilariously Ji-sung blows. No, really. His new lung gives him the ability to blow super strong wind. It’s hilarious, mostly useless and makes for odd breaks in the film’s action set pieces.
After figuring out they each have a heretofore unrealised tattoo that denotes their transplantee status, they connect as a reluctant, ragtag (they’re always ragtag) crew and dig into what appears to be a conspiracy led by Seo to… start a megachurch? Unlock the key to eternal life? Bilk the foaming devotees out of millions? I really don’t know, and neither does writer-director Kang Hyoung-chul. Not really. All that matters is that pancreas man, it seems, can suck the power from the other five, which makes him younger and younger, until he turns into GOT7 boybander Jinyoung.
Based on the film’s closing moments it’s clear Hi-Five was being positioned for a sequel that was unlikely to happen given co-star Yoo’s drug (slapped with a suspended sentence) and sexual assault (charges dropped) scandals, which delayed the film’s release for two years. Well, that may not be a off the table just yet, considering audiences went out to see the film in droves at home: Hi-Five has performed well at Korea’s box office for three weeks running. So Sunny director Kang has a hit on his hands, but one that can’t shake that Korean urge to melodrama and which is exhausting and wears out its welcome at a bloated two hours. And the petty macho posturing between Ki-dong and Ji-sung isn’t nearly as charming as Kang thinks it is.
To be fair (insert Letterkenny echo here), Kang’s decision to go OTT and overtly artificial in his anti-physics SFX for The Five’s heroic antics was smart. If you don’t have Marvel money, don’t try; even Marvel fucks that up on the regular now. There are a couple genuine chuckles to be had, and a high speed chase on Sun-nyeo’s Yakult cart and a punch-up between Won-seo’s dad – that’s actually Won-seo – and some thugs sent by Seo are inspired. The cart chase is scored to one of the film’s more ear-catching needle drops in “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a stab at making Rick (Astley) Rolling happen again, which runs alongside Corey Hart’s (!) supremely ’80 “Sunglasses at Night” (only tolerable for its now-Elbows Up-ness) and Sister Sledge’s disco anthem “We Are Family” because of course. Still doesn’t make it better.