[KFCC] Spark The Lighter Review

Story: Bong Gu has no job, no friends and no money, only a mother who really worries about his condition. After an exhausted reserve military drill exercise, on his way back home, he buys one of those cheap plastic lighters with the only money he has left in his pocket. With nothing in the future in perspective and no money at all, the only thing that it remains to him his cheap lighter.

Taking a break in a public restroom at the train station, he loses his precious lighter. Trying to find desperately were he left it, he finally discover that his precious is now in the hand of a low life gangster named Chul Gon, who is on his way to an important meeting. Bong Gu is now ready to do more than everything to get back his belonging and that includes facing this gangster and his mean bodyguards.

Review: How can you base a movie on a simple premise such as the one of Spark The Lighter? Get the people behind the now classic Korean movie Attack the Gas station and also Kick The Moon. This time the team tried to repeat the success of their two previous movies, but unfortunately the result was not as good as expected. Spark the light has a lot of good elements but because of an average directing aspect and the miss of attaching characters, the movie never goes below the average comedy.

Park Jeong-Wu's script really saves the day, as the story and chain of events are really the strongest points of the movie. The story starts rather slowly but builds a fast rhythm with each minute, until the big conclusion. If you saw Attack the Gas Station and Kick the movie, I’m sure that you get the idea. The movie is fun to follow and always brings a couple of surprises along the development, that puts the main characters in more trouble each time. Unfortunately Kim Sang-Jin directing vision is not there to support the story. This time new director Jang Hang-Jun is behind the camera. Probably because of his lack of imagination to find a good concept to bring up the jokes and important moments, Jang Hang-Jun never achieves to make these moments memorable or unforgetable, only just funny. This is not a reason to hate the movie of course but it’s obvious that a more careful approach could have exploited Park's script much better.

On the character side you can recognize a few actors who also worked on Attack the Gas Station or Kick the Moon such as Cha Seung-Won who played the gym teacher in Kick the Moon. Now he plays the evil gangster and he is one of the most charismatic characters of the movie. Warn heart inside, hard as a rock outside and always on time with his facial expression, Cha Seung-Won really steals the show of Kim Seung-Wu who played the other main character.

Kim Seung-Wu was also good in his role, but his character just looked like a supporting character, nothing more. You can feel pity for him from time to time but he never gets to shine as much as his adversary. Park Yeong-Gyu who played the owner of the gas station in ATGS is also in this production. This time he plays an ex-gangster turned politician. His performance is also very good and surprising, as every time I see him I still can see that poor gas station owner who always get beaten up, but not this time. In Spark the lighter, his character knows how to keep opposed to other people ideas and he is also one of the principal elements who will greatly affect the development of the story.

There’s also a lot of familiar faces in the supporting cast, you can also find most of them in Attack the Gas Station and Kick the Moon. The most noticeable second characters are the few people who stand behind Bong Gu: a much too talkative man, a very shy nerdy guy and a young women who can stand to his right. On the other side you have the few gangster and bodyguard of Chul Gon who are as stupid as each other

As you can see, there’s a good melting pot of character, so you can imagine that they will keep you smiling all along the viewing. But as I mentioned before, the jokes are most of the time easy to guess or not really funny, well it is not bad but nothing to go crazy about. At least the rhythm of the movie is really good and never forgets to entertain the viewer with a few jokes, small action sequence, good CGI and twist plot here and there.

Spark the lighter is a decent comedy but to tell the true, I was expecting a bit more from this production, considering the people who worked behind it, I’m a bit surprised from the final result. I don’t think I can advise this movie to everyone, but those who like Korean comedy in general should have a fun ride. As for those who are expecting the same quality as Attack the Gas Station, well maybe I suggest you to wait for their next production, which is Jail Breakers.