Binge-r #259: Squid Game + Hightown
Games without Frontiers: Jung Ho-yeon (Player #67) in Squid Game
SQUID GAME
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: All nine episodes now streaming
Squid Game, the unexpected new Netflix sensation from South Korea where the drama’s scripted games really are a life and death matter, deploys just enough bloody set-pieces and twisty machinations to keep you in step with the burgeoning body count. Hang Dong-hyuk’s series has fantastical flourishes and a grim late-era capitalism heart, picturing a vast conspiratorial complex where those crushed by debt sign up to secretly play a series of children’s games – win all six and you’ll get wildly rich, lose any one and you die. For gambling junkie, deadbeat dad, and loan shark fugitive Seong Gi-hun (the expressive Lee Jung-jae), it’s a typically bad short cut he impulsively takes and comes to regret. Follow him through the first episode, which deftly sets up his character as having a tiny redemptive streak, and you’ll get to a scene so boldly blatant that you may laugh with inadvertent shock at the expertly staged carnage.
With its masked guards in fluoro pink tracksuits and cavernous entry rooms that suggest a candy-coloured Escher drawing, Squid Game is awash in vivid imagery. The games are played in a facility so huge as to be otherworldly, which is what the show says about the division between rich and poor. The people who run the games, which are presided over by The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), whose own mask suggests a homicidal Academy Award statue come alive, are from a different realm than the desperate players Gi-hun, or #456, soon meets. #67 (Jung Ho-yeon) is a North Korean defector trying to get her family out, while #199 (Anupam Tripathi) is a guest worker from Pakistan whose boss has withheld his wages. When a giant piggy bank descends from the roof and fills up with cash – the more players that die, the larger the prize pool for those who progress – the desperate look up like worshippers in the presence of their deity.
Squid Game is not the first South Korean production to position inequality as an unrelenting crucible, although it is a hammer compared to the scalpel cuts of Bong Joon-ho’s Academy Award-winner Parasite (still streaming on Stan). A better comparison, for the mordant humour and grisly punctuation, is Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy. Like that brutal crime thriller, the unknown game can only end by being played out. Hang’s competitors are offered the illusion of choice, even a vote to get their group released, but they ultimately have no option but to return. “A player is not allowed to stop playing,” runs a clause in the contract they sign, suggesting that they are cogs in a machine. You have to persist through the second episode, but as with a previous Netflix international hit, Spain’s Money Heist [full review here], the twisty storytelling starts to pile up and your curiosity about where it’s going – and who will survive? – may be stronger than your connection to the characters. Either way, I’ll take this over Emily in Paris any day.
Wave of Mutilation: Jackie (Monica Raymund) and Ray (James Badge Dale) in Hightown
HIGHTOWN S1 (Stan, all eight episodes now streaming): With the second season debuting on October 17, it’s a good time to catch up on this pithy American crime drama. Set in the opioid-soaked underbelly of the Cape Cod tourist region, the first season of Hightown introduced a conflicted protagonist in Jackie Quinones (Monica Raymund), a gay federal fisheries agent with deep-seated addiction issues and a preference for one-night stands with visiting tourists. When she stumbles across a body on a local beach the morning after a hook-up, Jackie is drawn to the case even though it’s not her responsibility. The idea of what you can and can’t ignore – what you’re ultimately willing to live with – is central to the plot pieced together by creator Rebecca Cutter (Gotham), with the clues unearthed by Jackie and one of the official investigator’s, Detective Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale), intertwining with the difficult discoveries she makes about herself. It’s a very good series, not a great one, but the benchmarks it achieves are worthy: notably a distinct sense of place and morally ambiguous characters.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: You can put Britney vs. Spears (2021, 93 minutes) near the top of the list for documentaries about the pop star’s heinous conservatorship – as confirmed here with good reporting, it was a form of legal imprisonment; Boss Level (2021, 100 minutes) is a by the numbers time-loop action film from Joe Carnahan (The Grey) that literally goes through the motions while underutilising Joe Grillo, Michelle Yeoh, and Naomi Watts.
New on SBS on Demand: Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson (2006, 103 minutes) features a detailed, moving performance by Ryan Gosling as Dan Dunne, a progressive teacher at a Brooklyn high school whose best intentions as an educator stumble up against his deteriorating drug usage and the struggle of one of his best students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), to not get ensconced in the narcotics trade like her siblings.
New on Stan: Headlined by finely judged performances from Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci (wearing the finest in mature male knitwear) Supernova (2020, 95 minutes) is a tender love story that unfolds in the shadow of looming loss; The Town (2010, 125 minutes) is a pungent Boston crime drama from Ben Affleck, who as a thief torn between demands and hopes is backed by an exemplary supporting cast of Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, and Jon Hamm.
>> Missed the last BINGE-R? Click here to read about Apple TV+’s science-fiction epic Foundation and the return at Netflix of the Australian drama Tangle.
>> Want BINGE-R sent to your inbox? Click here for the weekly e-mail.
>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 338 series reviewed here, 162 movies reviewed here, and 41 lists compiled here.
