DLAznMovies.com: The Customer Is Always Right

Genre: Crime, Drama
Starring: Sung Ju-ru, Myeong Gye-nam, Seong Hyeon-a, Lee Seon-gyun
Release year: 2006
Language: Korean
Subtitle: English

SYNOPSIS:
An Chang-jin is a barber, a third-generation barber, in fact. He chats with customers, cuts their hair, shaves them. His everyday life is so ordinary and dull at the peaceful barbershop, except that his wife is young and beautiful. Then, one day a strange customer, Kim Yang-gil, visits the barbershop. He has “HATE” tattooed upon each finger joint. He gets a shave, a haircut and demands money three times a week. The intimidator takes double money each time he visits. The barber gradually is driven into a corner and he wants to escape from the bully but it is beyond his capacity because he is smart, minute, violent, mean and sly. Moreover, the intimidator casts an amorous glance at the barber’s wife and the barber, who can’t bear this anymore, hires a detective. The appearance of the detective seems to bring him peace but it’s just for a while. On the contrary, the curious detective watches for a chance to catch the barber unawares plus his riddling wife complicates this affair. The odd encounter with the barber, the stranger, the detective and the barber’s wife comes to an unexpected end.

RATING: 8.5/10
USER RATING:

REVIEW:
" This movie is unusual, strange and almost unique. Director Oh Ki-hyeon's efforts to make a korean film that is somewhat different from mainstream surely is something he deserves credit for. He creates a thriller, which offers a good amount of black humour. Towards the end there is more and more drama finding its way on screen, so that the movie actually can go near to you, eventually. However, up until then the dubious characters and the emotional distance the sets induce, create an unnecessary wall between the viewer and the events on screen. Somehow it's really hard to get access to this film, only towards the showdown this changes, fortunately. For some this might be just too late, but, the movie can score with some other strengths.

For quite some time the viewer is left in the dark concerning several questions the movie raises or provokes and the director seems to take pleasure in tantalizing the audience for an almost endless amount of time. If it weren't for the great and mean-charismatic effort of Myeong Gye-nam the movie really would have taken the risk to be just plain boring. Still, even as it is, there are some pacing problems left. Furthermore, many things just don't work out the way, they might have been supposed to. The repetitive style of some scenes is sometimes pretty tedious and somehow the movie just feels strange at times. Why is that? It is because you really never have seen anything like "The Customer is always right" before. And this, as time goes by, actually turns into one of the movie's strengths. Besides, with its handful of people in the center of events the film almost resembles a stage play, which is also fun.

The modest use of black humour and the long great resolution at the end, as well as the several time jumps into the past can be quite fascinating. There are lots of twists, nice allusions, also involving the title of the movie, and in the end it is really easy to put every piece together, eventually, so that everything becomes a whole at last. Even though we can't deny the fact that some (unimportant) pieces get lost along the way.
Interestingly enough the film works strongly on a drama level at the end, and does so impressively well. Finally, we can sympathize with at least one of the characters. The emotional distance, however, remains an annoying thread or rather motif that runs through the whole movie and really could have been avoided.
"The Customer is always right" is a difficult case. For some viewers the film will be just too alienating, and others won't hang on long enough to discover the hidden cleverness in this movie. Furthermore, there are also some flaws to be found concerning entertainment, even if this doesn't carry that much weight.

The fact of the matter is that there are some exceptionally well approaches, the visuals are great and the story is enthralling, too. Director Oh Ki-hyeon just has to work on his final touch. For a first-time-director this is great stuff, however. It leaves us hoping that he gets another chance in the future in order to improve his skills even more. There definitely is potential and his courage to make a somewhat different movie and not go for the umpteenth rom-com as all the other first-time directors do, shall be rewarded in this review.
"The Customer is always right" surely isn't for everyone, but it should be easy to read between the lines that I find Oh's work actually to be very unique and fascinating. "

Source: AsianMovieWeb

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