Fly Daddy

Scene one: by a window with sun shining on it. The camera takes a close-up shot of Seung-seok who is leaning on the window with his left leg slightly bent. With his mouth delicately shut, he is focusing on reading “Che Guevara.” Although having said that fighting meant everything in his life, he still reads from the book, looks out the window, reads another page, and immerses in thought.

Scene two: Ga-pil swears that he will fight for his daughter. Nevertheless, fear still lingers inside him. At that precise moment, Seung-seok comes to him and says with the lowest possible tone, “Don’t you want to protect what is precious?”

These are scenes from the movie adaptation of Korean-Japanese novelist Kaneshiro Kazuki’s novel “Fly Daddy.” The plots revolves around the everyday-average father Chang Ga-pil, played by Lee Moon-sik, becoming stronger after meeting with high school senior and fighting champion Koh Seung-seok, played by Lee Jun-ki. The essence of the movie is the process where the ultra-realistic character Ga-pil meets with the four-dimensional Seung-seok in order to harmonize with each other.

Seung-seok lives in his own world without compromising with anything. The acting of Lee Jun-ki, who plays Seung-seok, seems to carry an unknown narcissist nature. Over half of his lines are ancient proverbs, adages or accurate statistic figures that only show up in encyclopedias. On top of that, unlike a native of an “Eastern Courtesy Country,” his words lack any respect whatsoever. His school uniform tie is always half loose, and his staring downward as if he is angry with something makes him look as if he is suffering from severe narcissism.

Then what scores would Seung-seok’s narcissism receive? On a scale of five, with five being the highest, some viewers gave a score based various aspects, including his words, actions, and looks.

The Dong-a Ilbo movie review team says, “The book ‘Che Guevara, Companero En La Revolucion’ is book easy for prince charming to read.” Four points for words and actions

Lee Bong-soo: “Lee’s real age is 29, in another movie he is 20, Koh Seung-seok’s age is 70. Why? Because he is a master.” Three points for looks

Che Yi-young: “Even his spasms are lovely.” Five points for words and actions

Kim Young-jin: “Koh Seung-seok is not the one that is carefully seducing, it is Lee Jun-ki.” Four points for words and actions.

bsism@donga.com