A promo photo for the film indicates what The President’s Last Bang would be, posing as it does two men, one holding a revolver against his impeccable suit, the other equally elegant and blowing a bubble. Uneasily mixing not-graphic violence with slapstick comedy, a troubling true seventy-two hours in a troubled true country with universal political satire, this movie was sued by President Park’s heirs and did not enjoy success at home in 2004. Why not? According to a couple from Seoul, because its humor is neither Korean nor, the wife adds, at all geared towards women.

Opening theatrically ten days after appearing in the 2005 New York Film Festival, Im Sangsoo’s fourth venture as writer-director indeed has international roots. The sardonic darkness is closer to East Europe than Asia, its spirit calls up The Great Dictator (Jack Oakie’s Benzino Napaloni is father to pantless Chief Bodyguard Cha [Jeong Wonjoong]); dark room-to-room hallway pans, mirrors, overheads and shots through windows are Western, face-slapping preparation and body-odor concerns come out of U.S. aftershave, breath-freshener and underarm commercials, and there’s even an echo of Richard III.

For all this, the grounding is in a particular place and period, in a country whose public face between liberation in 1945 and the XXIV Olympiad is a confusion of partition, a shooting war and later near civil war, coups, assassinations and failed attempts, student demonstrations, repression. Without a scorecard, the cast of characters is difficult to keep straight. While doing so is not essential, obviously Korean audiences are already familiar, and in fact the original title, transliterated Geuddae Geusaramdeul and taken from a hugely popular song guitar-accompanied within the film by the Singer (Kim Yoohah), translates as “The People at That Time,” that is, 1979.

Eight years after seizing power in an army coup, former general now twice-“reelected” President Park Chunghee (Song Jaeho) is ageing ungracefully and “truly lonely” since a botched 1974 plot that missed him but got his wife.  Gum-chewing Korean Central Intelligence Agency operative Ju (Han Sukgyu) spends much of his effort curtailing leaks about the head of state’s cavorting with women of dubious reputation, but on this particular October 26 he and Colonel Min (Kim Eungsoo) are to bring the ambitious Singer and the party girl Miss Cho (Cho Eunji) to a threesome dinner at the KCIA’s gated Safehouse near the presidential Blue House.

At the meal will be the President, Bodyguard Cha and Chief Secretary and bartender Yang (Kwon Byunggil) and the two female “escorts.”  Earlier, Ju’s dapper boss, Agency Director Kim Jaegyu (Baik Yoonsik), received an unpromising medical prognosis but, too pressured to follow the physician’s recommendations, must be present at the Victorian-paneled house to oversee security.  Fed up with the sake-drinking president, his hangers-on, and the deteriorating situation, Kim announces to Ju, Min, silent Safehouse majordomo Shim (Cho Sanggun) and a couple of inept agents and drivers that “it’s showtime!” He himself will enter the private dining room to kill Park and, a necessary “freebie,” his personal rival Cha; the other plotters are to take out bodyguards, loyal staff, cooks and so on.

The various killings are more or less successful, though both dead and living have to be shot a second or third or fourth time. Actual moments of violence are tame, with subsequent watery bloodflow comically exaggerated, as the deserted curfewed city sleeps unknowingly on. A Code 2 Emergency declared, the military headquarters bunker is bumblingly laughable, too. The president’s corpse must be officially identified and its naked private parts covered with an officer’s hat, but Prime Minister Choi’s timidity in then assuming pro tem leadership bodes serious ill for the nation.

Sleepless and plagued by bilious indigestion, Kim momentarily keeps his key participation undiscovered in the confusion of dismay, recrimination and ambition. Seemingly loosing interest in itself, however, as though having made its point and enough, the film abruptly wraps up with brief scenes of the individuals involved accompanied by cursory printed titles telling the fate of each.

Perhaps the idea here is the spontaneous route of what, as in football games, appears orchestrated on Monday morning but is at bottom blind good or bad luck, opportunism getting the better of emotion.  While some are tempted to mention this Im satire on the same page as Dr. Strangelove, comparisons to that sharply focused black masterpiece are invariably unfair. Whether you take to this one or not, will depend on your acceptance of looseness in the service of overall effect. 

(Released by Kino International; not rated by MPAA.)