Gosh! I Feel So Victimized!
I've been keeping a list of movies seen since the beginning of 2020, and it's up to thirty so far, which is like...approximately 1.42857143 a day. Plus TV, of course. The most recent thing I've been watching, on Netflix, is a K-series called The Firey Priest that often provides a spirits-lifting chaser to whatever other crazy/disturbing/emotionally exhausting shit I might've been ladling into my eyes. The main character, Father Michael, is a former Korean Special Forces soldier who suffers horrifying PTSD after throwing a grenade into a room he only realizes is full of refugee children just before it goes off; he tries to kill himself with alcohol and bar-fights, then trips across the Korean version of that Monsignor in Les Miserables who gives Jean Valjean his silver candlesticks. This guy manages to convert Father Michael, get him to go to seminary and (later) presides over him taking his vows.
But even as a priest, Father Michael continues to be proud and argumentative, possessed of both an intense temper and the martial skills needed to back it up. We're introduced to him when he interrupts a fake exorcism arranged to shake down the "possessed" man's family, then pursues the shady shaman across a causeway at low tide and holds his face down into the mud until the dude tells him a local gangster put him up to it. Father Michael then fights his way through all this guys' thugs until he finds him hiding inside a cabinet in his office, pulls him out, and hauls back his fist. "Wait!" the gangster complains. "You're a priest! Listen to God!" Father Michael looks up, smiles slightly, and replies: "Ah yes, I do hear the voice of God--and he's telling me to knock you out." POW!
(BTW, his fist literally does often burst into flames before he lets loose. Not all the time, but enough. It's probably a metaphor. It looks amazing.)
At any rate: Father Michael's God-inspired rampage gets him thrown out of his diocese, so he has to go stay with the Monsignor for a while, ostensibly to learn to calm the fuck down. Unfortunately, the Monsignor's church is located in Gudam, possibly THE most ridiculous corrupt district in all of South Korea, which is really saying something. Father Michael quickly runs afoul of the incredibly dirty mayor and her cabal of similarly bent lawyers, business-people, cops, etc. Possibly the worst of the bunch is Mister Hwang, ostensibly CEO of a local trading company, who's basically just a really well-dressed but slightly neurotic gang boss. Father Michael also antagonizes the highly ambitious and beautiful DA ("Gosh, why is he so damn handsome?" she keeps asking herself, internally, even when throwing out snarky lines like: "Are priests allowed to drink that much?") and Detective Gu of the Violent Crimes Squad, a man so hilariously stupid he almost seems like he escaped from some Korean-language Brooklyn Nine Nine rip-off filming next door. Then the Monsignor gets murdered in order to advance one of the mayor's schemes, and things really take off.
I get that it probably doesn't sound funny, but it's actually made me laugh out loud multiple times, especially during the plot twist which had Father Michael taking the DA's satirical advice to "Write to the Pope, why don't you?!" I'm only five episodes in, but thus far the enjoyment factor hasn't faded, which is more than I can say for a lot of other stuff I've started (and later discarded) on Netflix.
All right, time to go to bed.
This entry was originally posted at https://handful-ofdust.dreamwidth.org/579586.html. Please comment either here or there using OpenID.
But even as a priest, Father Michael continues to be proud and argumentative, possessed of both an intense temper and the martial skills needed to back it up. We're introduced to him when he interrupts a fake exorcism arranged to shake down the "possessed" man's family, then pursues the shady shaman across a causeway at low tide and holds his face down into the mud until the dude tells him a local gangster put him up to it. Father Michael then fights his way through all this guys' thugs until he finds him hiding inside a cabinet in his office, pulls him out, and hauls back his fist. "Wait!" the gangster complains. "You're a priest! Listen to God!" Father Michael looks up, smiles slightly, and replies: "Ah yes, I do hear the voice of God--and he's telling me to knock you out." POW!
(BTW, his fist literally does often burst into flames before he lets loose. Not all the time, but enough. It's probably a metaphor. It looks amazing.)
At any rate: Father Michael's God-inspired rampage gets him thrown out of his diocese, so he has to go stay with the Monsignor for a while, ostensibly to learn to calm the fuck down. Unfortunately, the Monsignor's church is located in Gudam, possibly THE most ridiculous corrupt district in all of South Korea, which is really saying something. Father Michael quickly runs afoul of the incredibly dirty mayor and her cabal of similarly bent lawyers, business-people, cops, etc. Possibly the worst of the bunch is Mister Hwang, ostensibly CEO of a local trading company, who's basically just a really well-dressed but slightly neurotic gang boss. Father Michael also antagonizes the highly ambitious and beautiful DA ("Gosh, why is he so damn handsome?" she keeps asking herself, internally, even when throwing out snarky lines like: "Are priests allowed to drink that much?") and Detective Gu of the Violent Crimes Squad, a man so hilariously stupid he almost seems like he escaped from some Korean-language Brooklyn Nine Nine rip-off filming next door. Then the Monsignor gets murdered in order to advance one of the mayor's schemes, and things really take off.
I get that it probably doesn't sound funny, but it's actually made me laugh out loud multiple times, especially during the plot twist which had Father Michael taking the DA's satirical advice to "Write to the Pope, why don't you?!" I'm only five episodes in, but thus far the enjoyment factor hasn't faded, which is more than I can say for a lot of other stuff I've started (and later discarded) on Netflix.
All right, time to go to bed.
This entry was originally posted at https://handful-ofdust.dreamwidth.org/579586.html. Please comment either here or there using OpenID.