Teenage Hooker Became A Killing Machine

Teenage Hooker Became A Killing Machine is an astonishing title in search of a film worth that kind of bareknuckle high-concept intensity; this isn't it.

While the title is a mouthful, if an awesome one, it's still briefer than its original, the more than a little unwieldy, Daehakno-yeseo maechoon-hadaka tomaksalhae danghan yeogosaeng ajik Daehakno-ye Issda. It appears shorter ideogrammatically, and that's just about the only time; at an hour Teenage Hooker is still too long, and there's a few reasons for it.

Firstly, it's a remake, though a loose one, of Luc Besson's Nikita, a film that's had its share of directorial visions imposed on it. Nothing new happens here, it's even got (yet again) the sequence with the window (or lack of) in the mensroom of a restaurant. Secondly, it's boring; actually tedious in places. It has seven minutes of fuzzy credits at the start, enough that one suspects the DVD is playing in the wrong order, sequences that drag out longer than the ought to, and some dodgy characterisations. Overblown and overwrought, Kim Dae-tong is the head bad guy, though he's less offensive than his mooks. Lee So-yun comes across as flat and emotionless even before she is turned into a cyborg robot thing by the shadowy (and unexplained) Department 6.

Shot on DV in 2000, it hasn't dated well. Bold colour palette experimentation looks like artifacting and signal degradation. It appears fuzzy in an otherwise clean DVD transfer, and in conjunction with the slower than langourous pacing it appears as a pixelated dream, the kind one would be glad to forget upon waking.