Apgujeong Report (2022)

"One must earn like a dog and spend like a beast"

The Men of Plastic was a comedy about greedy men and women willing to scam patients and double-cross each other in order to get ahead. While the cast was strong, the storytelling was not.

Kang Dae Gook (Ma Dong Seok) is a hustler and facilitator in his neighborhood, closely affiliated with his old high school friend, gangster Cho Tae Chun. When he discovers Tae Chun meeting with an unlicensed plastic surgeon who does ghost surgeries, he takes the opportunity to make a business deal with Tae Chun and Park Ji Woo (Jung Kyung Ho), the surgeon. He enlists buddy Mi Jung (Oh Na Ra) and before long the crew is bringing in money hand over fist. In order to make some legal issues go away they end up approaching the sketchy Gyu Ok (Oh Yeon Seo) and doing business with her. It doesn’t take long for the scammers to get scammed.

I’m a big fan of Ma Dong Seok and enjoy watching Jung and Oh as well. Ma’s primary character trait was wearing loud shirts and mismatched hats and initially he sported a fiery pink-red hair dye. This was not one of Jung Kyung Ho’s stronger performances, largely due to his character’s cold, untrusting nature. A strong bromance would have helped this movie enormously but the two men never seemed to trust or like each other. Most of the characters were hard to feel anything sympathy for. The one bright spot was Oh Na Ra. She brought an effervescent energy badly needed when she was onscreen.

South Korea has the highest per capita amount of plastic surgery done in the world. Nearly 1 in 3 Koreans will have some work done on themselves often by the age of 21. The movie was set in 2007 and the team was encouraging medical tourism. As of July 2023 (post-pandemic lower numbers), around 82,000 foreigners visit Korea for various beauty treatments and surgeries. The fierce competition for clients was touched on with Ji Woo being the victim of a “surgical hit job”. There was no introspection or comedic rumination on why the waiting room was always filled with young women who felt the need to hand over large sums of money to improve their looks. This was strictly a by the book routine comedy.

Men of Plastic could well have described many of the characters as they were difficult to care about even when they were about to lose everything. At nearly 2 hours, this film dragged rather badly at times. If plastic surgery fascinates you or you are a fan of the cast you might want to check it out, but otherwise it’s one that can be skipped or as it will be soon in my case—forgotten.

11/18/23

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