PopSyndicate.com

After a year long absence, a man returns to his hometown to make peace with a friends’ death and try to win back the woman he left behind.

Sam (Sung Kang) returns to Koreatown in L.A., having mysteriously disappeared a year earlier.  His intentions are told in voice-over, one of many noir touches given to the film throughout.  He’s here to try and settle the score for the death of his friend Joon (Leonardo Nam), who was killed in a drug deal gone bad that forced Sam to leave town.

Sam also wants to rekindle the romance with his ex, Vera (Kelly Hu), who is now waitressing for a man she owes a good deal of money to after being left in a bind by Sam’s sudden disappearance.  Further complicating things is the affections that she and her benefactor seem to have for one another, though these feelings may be more out of guilt than anything else on her part, as she feels she owes him for all he’s done for her.

Sam looks up his mentor Don (Tom Bower), a retired criminal who wants nothing to do with Sam’s current scam, which involves a crooked cop that Joon had dealings with that Sam is now planning to blackmail.  She sets hitman Leon (Russell Wong) on Sam’s trail, but he may have competition as the twists and turns of the plot soon involves other members of the underworld as well.

Undoing is a fairly ambitious film, and director Chris Chan Lee makes the most of his visual flair on what I’d guess is a lower budget indie project.  The freeze frame moments that pepper the film are reminiscent of the sex scenes from My Own Private Idaho, and the overall look of the film is one of a director trying to dress up a film as much as he can visually.  The film looks good, but the story is a tad convoluted for the simple end result it labors towards (Sam wants to scam his way into enough money to help out his dead friend’s family and then leave with his girl), so the viewer is left waiting for the film to ever really draw them in, something that never really happens.  I have to admit to being amused by Russell Wong channeling Christopher Walken in his delivery and down to the white/blonde shock of hair he sports in the movie, but otherwise nothing really jumped out and grabbed me.

Undoing features a Behind The Scenes featurette that runs about 15 minutes, deleted scenes, interviews with the cast and crew, a music video and the short film 9:30, which also stars lead actor Sung Kang.

An average crime drama, I can see this being a worthwhile experience for fans of any of the principal actors, but others may want to shy away.

2