Imagine a 19*19 wooden board in front of you. There are black rounded stones and white rounded stones; you choose one. You and your opponent then place your stones on the board until it’s all filled up and one of you has more territory than the other. I suppose this is the basic idea of the game “Go,” which I’ve learned in my nearly two hours watching the South Korean drama film The Match. The film tells the story of two legendary champions, pupil and master, Lee Chang-Ho and Cho Hoon-Hyun. The film begins with Cho returning home as the nation’s pride after defeating the world champion in a tournament in Singapore. A life-altering moment for him and for the game of “Baduk” in South Korea. Soon, Cho meets a young boy named Lee Chang-Ho. Seeing his deep interest in the strategic game and his calculative mind, Cho decides to take him in as a pupil. The film then follows the dramatic clash between mentor and student over the course of a decade.
For a lot of us, the game of “Go” is an idea that has crossed our minds at some point but has been completely forgotten. If you’ve had the good fortune to play it, you might enjoy watching these two men try to find the game inside of them, but for someone who hasn’t held the stones or touched the wooden board, The Match can definitely feel somewhat tedious, if not straight up boring. Take, for example, a show like “The Queen’s Gambit,” which brings a mind game like chess to life through interesting storytelling and a character analysis that keeps you hooked on the whys of the leading lady.
However, I notice that The Match has the same problem that a lot of biopics/based-on-true-events films face, and that is trying to get inside the heads of the people they’re trying to talk about. What I mean to say here is that if someone bothered to search up these players on the internet or perhaps watch a little documentary, they’d get the same information that this movie has to offer, which is not a lot of insight. Sure, we do see a little bit of the back and forth between the two champions, a teacher suffering after losing to his prodigy and a student who can’t stand the thought of defeating his master, but is that enough to hold up for an hour and 50 odd minutes? I’m not entirely sure.
The best part of the film has to be the performances, and it’s interesting, because usually when a film isn’t excellent, the first thing you’ll bring up is how the actors were great, but the movie was subpar. This is not me trying to say that The Match is just a wholly bad movie; it’s not—there have been far worse—but, when it comes to a topic such as this one, it becomes just slightly difficult to keep things exciting if you’re not taking full advantage of the dramatic nature of the plot itself. Lee Byung-Hun is excellent as the reigning champion Cho Hoon-Hyun. He’s equal parts broody and excitable, adding depth to a character that needs all the help that it can get to stand tall as a person. It’s not that the character presentation isn’t descriptive; it just seems somewhat lacking, you know? All I’m saying is, I wish he had more to work with, because he’s so great to watch.
Kim Kang-Hoon looks very different today than he does in this movie, because it was shot some 4 years ago. It’s quite a shame that he only got to be in the first 20 minutes of the film because he’s just fantastic as Chang-Ho, but of course, too young, to play him as an adult. Yoo Ah-In plays the grown-up version of Chang-Ho, and I think we can step away from the controversy for a bit and appreciate the man’s skill at looking like a child when he’s 38. Okay, but in all seriousness, we’ve always appreciated him as an actor, so I guess he’s lived up to his reputation in this one.
I think where the film thrives is the way it showcases the “Go” sequences. There are some interesting angles, cuts, and zooms that make the game look quite intriguing, I guess if you know what’s happening. But I don’t think that’s enough to make me call this movie great. I guess having the movie set in the 1980s-90s allows it to be color graded with a warm tone that almost makes it look sepia-toned, but not quite. I think this works for this film, which hopes to give us a nostalgic feeling. There are some really clean shots of the “Go” games, giving us the vantage point of the players, the press, other players, and casual viewers in the heat of the moment.
I do appreciate that the film attempts to portray the internal conflict of both lead characters, but I don’t think it’s enough to keep us hooked as viewers, especially when we’re trying to alternate between master and pupil every few minutes. It does become a little bit exhausting at some point. But the real big disappointment in this film is the lack of female characters, almost entirely, except for the one woman, who happens to be Cho’s wife. She gets put on a pedestal because she acts as a maternal character for Chang-Ho, who is much younger than his master, making her role feel very tacked on. This is a huge flaw in the film because it doesn’t pass the Bechdel test in any way, but it also makes it very clear that women are entirely uninterested in the game of “Go.” I suppose for a movie about male ego, it doesn’t matter to the dozens of men who will be watching and enjoying this film. Yet, I can’t help myself and say this completely erases the chances of me recommending it, especially to any fellow women (even if they enjoy the game).
At the end of the day, this is an average film at best, trying to speak volumes about two very above-average human beings, leaving the viewer quite disappointed. The film attempts to feel glorious through its dramatic soundtrack, but it doesn’t add much to the kind of negligible narrative. So, I will give The Match 2.5 out of 5 stars.
