[HanCinema's Film Review] "Bogota: City of the Lost"

On paper, "Bogota: City of the Lost" should have at least had a shot at the South Korean box office. But it couldn't even get a tenth of the admissions that "Harbin" did with 4.6 million viewers, despite both films being similarly depressing. Still, "Bogota: City of the Lost" has had a surprisingly good second wind on Netflix, topping all films on FlixPatrol in its first two days. If international fans of Song Joong-ki are enjoying his turn as Kook-hee, an immigrant to Colombia, why didn't South Koreans like it?

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Well, probably because "Bogota: City of the Lost" hits a bit close to home, ironically enough. Kook-hee's father Geun-tae (played by Kim Jong-soo) flees South Korea with his family in the wake of the East Asian Financial Crisis, and go to Colombia to try and get work with his father's old army buddy, Seargent Park (played by Kwon Hae-yo). In a mild twist, Seargent Park doesn't actually like Geun-tae all that much, but there's plenty of heavy lifting and transport work for Kook-hee to do.

Probably inevitably, Kook-hee becomes involved in drug-running. I mean that more in the sense that it's an inevitability of the script than that there's any real reason for Kook-hee to get into the business. Kook-hee himself barely seems to care about anything- not his family, not money. He doesn't even have a love interest. Kook-hee continues to do his job seemingly because he's good at it, even though his first big break was an entirely unnecessary destructive car chase.

Many young South Koreans today dream of escaping the country for the same reason Kook-hee's family did- general economic malaise. So it's hard to watch Kook-hee's story unfold with any real sympathy. He's not even very competent at being a gangster. Kook-hee is generally just in the right place at the right time to get another job, and more often than not he doesn't even have any choice in the matter.

An ambivalent film about Kook-hee reflecting on his strange path through life might have been interesting, maybe, if he had any strong opinions about, well, anything. Early on in "Bogota: City of the Lost" we hear Kook-hee discussing in voiceover how he wanted to go home, and eventually lost interest in that. What's so special about Colombia isn't really clear either. The scenery looks great, sure, but one of the first thing that happens to Kook-hee's family is that they're the victims of an armed robbery.

Even the gangster stuff is remarkably boring, mainly because noone in this movie is very good at being a gangster. Again, that's an almost interesting element- smuggling being about bribing border guards and making political allies rather than gunfights. But neither Kook-hee himself nor the movie at large shows any real interest in Colombian politics. The resulting criminal empire thus ends up feeling quite haphazard with a climax so low energy I didn't even realize it was the climax at all until the credits started rolling.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Bogota: City of the Lost" is directed by Kim Seong-je, and features Song Joong-ki, Lee Hee-jun, Kwon Hae-hyo, Park Ji-hwan, Cho Hyun-chul, Kim Jong-soo. Release date in Korea: 2024/12/31.