Here's a pleasant surprise, an old-school neo noir with smarts to match the style that knows exactly how much is enough. It's not going to revolutionize the genre and it doesn't do anything unexpected with the material. The reason it's a surprise is because it does everything so well and with such graceful restraint at a time when everyone else goes for excess.
Han So-hee and Jun Jong-seo play Mi-sun and Do-kyung, two down on their luck hostesses and small time grifters eking out a living in the opulent Gangnam district of Seoul. Just as their ship finally appears to have come in, the duo is robbed of their savings, sending them right back to the bottom with no way out. That is until a chance encounter with another scam comes their way, and the duo sees an opportunity to rip off worse gangsters than themselves for a quick buck.
Of course, nothing is ever that easy, and it's not long before they're caught up in a bigger, more violent game than they could have expected.
Watching Project Y, I kept thinking back to Sam Raimi's oft-forgotten thriller, A Simple Plan. Like its Korean relative, that too is a film about understandable losers who get a shot at something good, and how quickly it spirals out of their grasp. Both feature genre staples like bags of money with unmarked bills and the eventual fallout of greed and multiple lies piling on top of each other.
They're united in letting the characters drive the action, which makes the thrills work so well. At no point did I think how a situation could have been avoided by something as simple as acting like a regular person. There's no Idiot Plot here, only bad choices that stem from understandable desparation.
For example, watch how smartly Project Y introduces a matriarchal figure from our heroes' past. A lesser movie would spend ages explaining the backstories and perceived failures of every childhood moment. Here, we get a tender and heartbreaking beat as a failed mother figure knows the rope has run out and, in a act that's part survivalism and part a final act of love, she pushes away those closest to her by dismissively stating: "You're such a softie."
In one moment, we can read so much into that line, and the expressive face of Kim Shin-rok, who makes a meal out of her bit part. Like the best crime tragedies, Project Y paints an entire history of betrayal and disappointment through suggestion and unspoken resignation.
None of this would work if we didn't like our heroines, and the duo Han So-hee and Jeon Jong-seo rise admirably to the challenge. They ground the action with believable and charming performances that sell every bad choice they make.
By the end, I was deeply invested in their survival – even if it came at the cost of happiness. I just wanted to know they'd get a chance to see another day. That kind of bargaining with fiction is at the essence of neo noir. You know things won't turn out fine, but you can at least ask for the next best thing.
Project Y is directed by Lee Hwan, who was unfamiliar to me before this. He handles the material with elegance, crafting a great sense of geography in the seedy underbelly of Gangnam that even us foreigners can understand it. There's a smart understanding that a film like this doesn't need a sprawling canvas to function. We just need a couple of strong locations that grow increasingly suffocating as the choices run out. Hwan delivers on that in spades.
Granted, the two hour runtime tests the patience a bit, and the extended final act would work even better with a bit of tightening. But in the moment it's hard to notice, and any signs of weariness show up only after the credits have rolled.
A good neo noir transpots us into a waking nightmare that feels real, even as it builds up walls where they shouldn't exist. Project Y makes the gauntlet tangible and terrifying, and its terrific cast sells us on the fantasy. It's a terrific piece of entertainment that signifies the arrival of exciting new talent. What more could you ask for?
