This is the kind of movie chock full of security easter-eggs. Consider the synopsis, for example:
Tae-suk is homeless and lives like a phantom. His daily routine involves temporarily staying in houses and apartments he knows to be vacant. He never steals from, nor damages, his unknowing hosts’ homes; rather, he is like a kind ghost, sleeping in other people’s beds, eating a little food out of strangers’ refrigerators and repaying their unintended hospitality by doing the laundry or making small repairs. Once a beautiful model, Sun-hwa has become withered living under the shadow of her abusive husband who keeps her imprisoned in their affluent, expensively decorated house. Tae-suk and Sun-hwa are bound by fate to cross paths though their invisible existences.
Right away I noticed several important modern security problems:
- Identity in terms of self/other
- Presence and nonrepudiation
- Rights to use/borrow/own
And that’s just the beginning. The movie starts with Tae-suk on a fine late-model BMW motorcycle riding to neighborhoods and applying flyers to door keyholes. I think the director goes out of his way to show a man not desperate or reactionary, but rather a crafty and curious outsider who does not really ever want to be “in”. Incidentally I could not help but notice he never wears protective gear other than a helmet, which he does not fasten properly. Detail or foreshadowing? Anyway, as the day grows long, he returns to see which flyers have not moved in order to determine which house to enter and spruce up while its owners are away. He not only shows several habits of methodical precision but he clearly believes in the age-old fantasy of ninja-like invisibility, and yet he seems to remain grounded like a balloon that can not or does not want to release its weights.
Ghost and spiritual scenes are always amusing, but the blend of Korean culture with the humor in Tae-suk’s search for presence without being present, or non-identifiable identity (if you know what I mean) is really the soul (pun intended) of this movie.
There are some rough spots, but overall an excellent movie for security discussion and thought. Highly recommended. Five flyingpenguins (out of five).