Undoing
credits:
Director: Chris Chan LeeProducers: Karin Chien, Sung Kang, George Huey
Writer: Chris Chan Lee
Cast: Sung Kang, Kelly Hu, Rusell Wong, Jose Zuniga
USA 2006 | 90 mins | HDCAM | English
IN PERSON (at select screenings): Chris Chan Lee, Sung Kang, Leonardo Lam, Cynthia Hong, Philip Lam
It’s been ten years since Chris Chan Lee’s debut, YELLOW (SFIAAFF ‘97), heralded a new generation of Asian American independent filmmaking. He returns with his first feature since that time, UNDOING, a film that itself is about returns—that of Sam Kim (Sung Kang), a shadowy figure who comes back to the Los Angeles underworld one year after fleeing with a dying friend.
Seeped in the dark, ominous overtones of neo-noir, UNDOING marks a strikingly different direction for the actor Kang, best known for playing brooding bad boys in films such as BETTER LUCK TOMORROW and THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT. As Sam, Kang is stripped of bulletproof bravado. Instead, he’s a harried man on the run, exuding an air of desperation and uncertainty as he tries to pull off a complicated blackmail scam designed to both resolve his friend’s old murder and make amends with his estranged lover (Kelly Hu). However, his return creates more chaos than his departure as he attracts unwanted attention from crooked cops, K-Town gangsters and a deranged hitman (played with scene-chewing charm by Russell Wong).
True to noir traditon, an unsettling moral ambiguity haunts everyone; there are no innocents or villains here, only people struggling with pasts they can neither ignore nor escape. Stylish and ambitious, UNDOING marks a welcome return of Lee to the director’s chair.
—Oliver Wang
