'Smugglers' crew compliments each other on a film well done

Most people involved in making a film usually congratulate each other on their work, but the director and cast’s praise for veteran actor Kim Hye-soo in “Smugglers” was unlike any other. Actors Yum Jung-ha, Zo In-sung and director...

From left, actors Kim Hye-soo, Go Min-si and Yum Jung-ah play female divers who smuggle goods from the ocean in ″Smugglers″ [NEXT ENTERTAINMENT WORLD]

Most people involved in making a film usually congratulate each other on their work, but the director and cast’s praise for veteran actor Kim Hye-soo in “Smugglers” was unlike any other.

Actors Yum Jung-ah, Zo In-sung and director Ryoo Seung-wan were all in awe of Kim, who played one of the leads of “Smugglers” alongside Yum.

“I am so incredibly lucky have been able to work with Kim,” Yum said during an interview with local reporters last Friday. Yum played Jin-sook, a leader of female divers who smuggles goods through the ocean and who teams up with Kim’s character Chun-ja, in “Smugglers.” “I had the opportunity to work with Kim a very long time ago — 27 years ago, in a drama — but through ‘Smugglers,’ we have become good friends.”

Main poster for ″Smugglers″ [NEXT ENTERTAINMENT WORLD]

“Kim is the kind of actor that changes even the way cameras react,” Ryoo said during another interview with reporters on Wednesday. “We had the camera set to dark mode, and Kim was acting with her head tilted to one side. When she looked up, the monitor lit up too. I was amazed at how that could happen.”

“Kim was like the sun on set — she shined and allowed others to shine too,” Zo said during a separate interview last Friday. “I had a smaller role in ‘Smugglers,’ but I was glad that I made the choice to join the cast because I got to work with Kim and Yum.”

Actor Zo In-sung plays Sergeant Kwon, a smuggler who convinces female divers to join him on a scheme, in ″Smugglers″ [NEXT ENTERTAINMENT WORLD]

Ryoo, who has directed a dozen feature films so far, including “Die Bad” (2000), “No Blood No Tears” (2002), “The City of Violence” (2006), “Veteran” (2015) and “Escape from Mogadishu” (2021), said that balancing well-known aspects with new elements in “Smugglers” was the key point for consideration.

“I think, whether I intend to or not, there is an expectation and a preconception that the audience has toward my work based on my filmography,” Ryoo said. “Meeting those expectations and at the same time bringing something new to the table is the task. Some directors repeat themselves too much and get bad reviews, and some directors try too unfamiliar things and get ignored. It’s a really hard job. The new aspect for ‘Smugglers’ is that it’s set in the ocean, so the actors perform underwater.”

The actors trained for months for those underwater scenes, and for Yum, who was not familiar with the water or swimming, that was quite the challenge.

Actor Yum Jung-ah [ARTIST COMPANY]

“I trained very diligently — I play the leader of the divers, so naturally I had to be very proficient at swimming and diving,” she said. “I started with holding my breath, to diving a meter down underwater, to two meters, then six. I thought that at this rate, I would live in a pool even after filming, but that didn’t happen."

Kim and Yum were shown footage of underwater scenes and divers when they were first cast, and Ryoo reflected on their reactions — both actors were stunned, according to the director.

“This was before they had confirmed that they would appear in ‘Smugglers,’ and after I showed them the footage, they were speechless,” Ryoo said. “I mistakenly thought that they were moved by what they had seen and thought casting them would be a success. But later I found out that Yum had been worried about swimming and being underwater, and Kim had nearly had a panic attack just from watching the footage.”

Director Ryoo Seung-wan [NEXT ENTERTAINMENT WORLD]

But both actors ultimately joined the cast as the two leads, and Ryoo said he had “complete faith” in them.

“I had complete faith in them because they were actors who had proved for decades that they could act in any environment when they set their minds to it,” Ryoo said. “Underwater, diving, swimming, they could do it if they said they would.”

Zo, who plays Sergeant Kwon, a smuggler who convinces Jin-sook and Chun-ja to dive into the world of smuggling, said that he reciprocated Ryoo’s faith because he knew that Ryoo would not waste even the smallest of characters.

Actor Zo In-sung [IOK COMPANY]

“There needed to be a bridge between Kims and Yum’s characters,” Zo said. “And the director knew that — that was the purpose of my character, Sergeant Kwon. He has a reasoning for each character, and with that, I could trust him to lead the film well.”

Ryoo thanked Zo for participating in “Smugglers” despite the small size of his role and said that he likes Zo's acting. The two previously worked together in Ryoo’s last film, “Escape from Mogadishu.”

“After working with Zo in ‘Escape from Mogadishu,’ I became comfortable working with him and cast him again in ‘Smugglers,’” Ryoo said. “The staff for ‘Smugglers’ is the same staff that worked with me in ‘Escape from Mogadishu,' so they were also fans and colleagues of Zo.”

Actor Zo In-sung plays Sergeant Kwon, a smuggler who convinces female divers to join him on a scheme, in ″Smugglers″ [NEXT ENTERTAINMENT WORLD]

As the Korean film industry is facing trouble after the Covid-19 pandemic, with the number of moviegoers dwindling as people turn to streaming services and the price of film tickets soar, this summer’s domestically produced blockbusters such as “Smugglers” are tasked with the daunting job of reviving the film scene. Ryoo said that while it wasn’t his intention to jump into this job, he expects good results with “Smugglers” and says that things couldn’t be worse than it was during the pandemic.

“Two years ago, when I filmed and released ‘Escape from Mogadishu,’ the situation was very bleak,” the director said. “You couldn’t buy tickets after 7 o’clock in the evening, the audience had to sit with seats between them and the entire number of people going to theaters was a third of what it was before. But we did have positive responses to ‘Escape from Mogadishu,’ and I got the courage from that to open ‘Smugglers’ this time around.”

And so far, “Smugglers” also seems to be gathering good responses from the audience, with 170,000 people having bought tickets for the film even before its release, as of Tuesday. The film opens Tuesday, July 26, in theaters across Korea.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]