Lee Junki Appearance @ HIFF

Lee Junki made a special appearance at the 27th Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival last Friday, October 19. He was presented with the "Rising Star" award at the U.S. premiere of his latest movie, "May 18" at the Hawaii Theatre.

I did not expect to get to see Lee Junki because 1) I found out last minute, 2) Tickets must be sold out, and 3) Tickets must be expensive. But no, tickets were not sold out and tickets were only $12. Yay!

The movie did not start until 8:00 pm, but there were already long lines of people waiting when my friend, my sister and I showed up at 6:00 pm. Standing in line was a horrible experience because we literally had to smell poop (this was an area where homeless people dwell) for more than an hour. We passed the time talking to another wonderful Lee Junki fan standing in line with us. Although we all just met, we got along very well because we fangirled together had similar interests. We even exchanged email addresses before exchanging names! ^___^

At around 7:30 pm, the lines started moving, a black limousine drove by, and screams erupted. I ran to the front. At first, I couldn't see anything because there were so many people, but they all held their cameras and phones up, snapping away so I knew he was in the crowd somewhere. And then I spotted him! My heart nearly stopped.



It is not that I was particularly in love with him (I am now), but the experience of seeing him in real life, and not on television or in pictures, is staggering. He was just as beautiful and handsome pretty as he is in pictures, if not more. This was my only shot of him standing outside because people were blocking my view. =(

We were lucky to snag seats in the front, where we met more Lee Junki fans. Again, we spoke like old friends. (Fangirls unite!) It felt like forever before Lee Junki finally appeared on stage. Along with the "Rising Star" award, he was also presented with a bowl made of koa wood.



I felt very happyyy for him! ^^ He began his speech with the traditional, "Aloha!" His accent was fobby, but so adorable. <3 There were two translators: English and Japanese. After he said one line, he would wait for the English translator to finish her translation. He then opened his mouth to say his next line when he was interuppted by a man saying, "Wait, wait. Japanese first." IT WAS SO CUTE. <3 He forgot that there was a second translator more than once. xD

The movie experience was not as wonderful. For starters, the theater experienced some "technical difficulties." I couldn't believe that they experienced problems on such a night. ^^; There was no sound in the beginning. The sound came back on when the movie started but we found something new to complain about: the quality of the film was bad. The movie looked like it was being played from the computer.

"May 18" started out good. I loved the first half in the movie...and it is entirely coincidental that Lee Junki starred in only the first half. Or maybe not...? I really enjoyed the scenes between the brothers, Jin Woo (Lee Junki) and Min Woo (Kim Sang Kyung). My favorite scene is the bicycle scene (people who watched it should know what I'm referring to). I won't describe the scene because I know I will take the humor out of it.

I did not understand some parts of the movie very well because I was not familiar with the historical context behind the movie. I did some research after seeing the movie (*coughcough*) and the movie basically recounted the Kwangju Massacre in Kwangju, South Korea that lasted for ten days from May 18, 1980. The movie focused on the people caught in the upheaval and presented a shallow portrayal of the events. All of the soldiers were "evil" and all of the civilians were "innocent." I only got to see the civilians' side of the story. I found it horrifying to see so many innocent civilians getting beaten to death by soldiers. Somehow, watching this sort of violence on screen feels even worse than watching soldiers kill with guns or cannons. Women and children were not spared.

During the movie, I cried during a scene where a dad gets killed while trying to tries to save his son during an attack. The next scene showed Jin Woo trying to help an injured person. He also gets shot in the process. These scenes were heart wrenching. However, I felt that the biggest flaw of the movie was that they over-victimized the civilians, making it seem somehow phony. I think the filmmakers tried too hard to gain sympathy from the viewers which played down their effect of pathos rather than playing it up. To appeal to the audience's emotions, "less is more." I found a few scenes that were unnecessary and could have been removed. In fact, I think the movie would have been a lot better if they removed the third of multiple scenes of Chang Su's blind mother crying for him and the scene where a little boy cries for his dead father. In another scene, the civilians started dying one by one as they battled against the soldiers at the City Hall. One guy starts to say his name on the walkie-talkie and is later joined by others who go down. The talking scenes went on for quite a while and I felt that they were overly redundant. I do not mean to sound heartless, but it felt like too much.

The movie did hold surprises for me. I never expected to see Jin Woo killed off so early in the first half of the movie because he was our star. <3 It was also the first time I've seen a movie in which the main hero (Min Woo) of the movie dies (and it was a very senseless death, too). In fact, all of our main characters die except for Shin Ae, our leading girl. =(

If the movie weren't so shallow and if a few scenes are deleted, I would have like it a lot more.

...But I'm happy because I got to see Lee Junki. <3