Master Plan (2)
Beep—.
"That comes to 8,700 won total. Please insert your card up front."
"Appreciate it."
Kwak Ji-chul stuffed the snacks and soju from the counter into a plastic bag and stepped out of the convenience store. His face was haggard, eyes sunken—he looked every bit the unemployed failure who had lost his business.
"Ha, how the hell did I end up like this? Why does life keep twisting itself into knots?"
Lamenting his lot, he trudged along and entered a shabby inn room. Tense music began to build again, the camera framing the door he disappeared through at an uneasy angle.
In the audience, Jeong Su-yeon remembered the earlier scene where Kwak Ji-chul had opened his own front door and cried out inwardly.
No! Don't go in!
The music climbed to its peak. Kwak Ji-chul opened the door, flipped on the light—and found a man lying on the bed.
"You Kwak Ji-chul? The one who put in the request for me?"
It was the fixer who had taken the job: Pierre Choi, sprawled on the bed and casually eating the leftover snack food Ji-chul had left unfinished the day before.
"Whew."
A collective sigh of relief swept through the seats. On screen, however, Kwak Ji-chul was anything but relieved. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of Pierre Choi.
"Mom! Nearly had a heart attack!"
His massive frame recoiled in comic shock as he clutched his chest and sagged against the wall. Laughter erupted from the audience.
"With a build like a bear… what heart attack are you going to have?"
Pierre Choi's dry, deadpan delivery sent another wave of laughter through the theater. Still half-ready to bolt, Ji-chul kept one hand on the doorknob, eyebrows twitching, and asked carefully,
"You're Pierre Choi?"
"Who else would I be? This cheap inn doesn't even have a chair. Lie down here if you want."
Pierre patted the mattress beside him with shameless ease and shifted into a languid, almost coquettish side-lying pose. In the end Ji-chul, reading the room, perched miserably on the very edge of the bed. The contrast between Pierre's brazen nonchalance and the big man's pitiful caution kept a soft ripple of laughter rolling through the audience.
From that point on, Ryu Yeon-woo and Maseok Do became Pierre Choi and Kwak Ji-chul. Their rapid-fire banter shattered the tension the audience had been carrying from Ji-chul's point of view and flipped the early mood of the film into something bright and playful.
Yoo Kang-jin, a well-known film critic and reporter for Cineplan, nodded as he watched.
So that's why they held the lead actor Ryu Yeon-woo's entrance until now. They deliberately built the tension from the perspective of an ordinary, powerless family man who has something to protect, then dropped him in at the absolute peak. Classic Park Chan-hong.
On screen Pierre Choi casually snatched the convenience-store bag from Ji-chul's hand, pulled out a snack, and kept talking.
"Let's just sit and eat snacks for a bit. I've already called the sharks in this game. Wonder if Deer will show up first?"
"Deer?"
Pierre smirked, popped a snack into his mouth with a crisp crunch, and the camera closed in on his face exactly the way it had framed his first appearance. Critic Yoo Kang-jin watched the screen with open admiration.
Park Chan-hong is one thing, but the magnetic pull this actor has is on a whole different level. Building tension and focusing every expectation on a single point makes that entrance almost impossible to land—yet he owns the entire frame with pure charisma.
One by one the specialists Pierre had summoned began filing into the tiny motel room until it was packed.
"Pierre, why the hell did you make us meet in a dump like this? Ugh, filthy."
"Oh look, it's the Junk Dealer. You've put on some weight. Grab a hammer and you'd be a perfect dwarf."
"And you've lost even more hair since last time. Can't you at least draw yourself a decent head?"
Infiltration, seduction, and performance specialist: Deer.
Intelligence and tech specialist: Junk Dealer.
Set design and makeup specialist: Picasso.
And the architect himself, Pierre Choi.
Deer—Jennifer—kept grumbling while the others traded greetings after the long absence. In the middle of it all, Kwak Ji-chul sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed, getting jostled this way and that, drawing more laughter from the audience.
Then Pierre rose from the bed, picked up a briefcase from the corner, and pulled out a sketchbook that looked like something a kindergartener would use.
"All right, listen up."
The moment he set the sketchbook on the bed, every conversation stopped. The pink children's sketchbook with a princess character on the cover filled the screen and the theater burst into laughter again.
"God, why does this guy have such weird tastes?"
Jennifer shook her head. Pierre gave her a small smile and flipped open the first page. Inside, contrary to the cover, the pages were packed with dense data and attached photographs—a full operational briefing.
"Shall we raise the stakes a little?"
It was the same line Ryu Yeon-woo had delivered at the end of the trailer. Upbeat, driving music kicked in as Pierre walked them through the plan and the team refined it together, the sequence cutting rapidly between them.
Every time the screen filled with Jennifer's alluring red lipstick and flawless face, the male audience members swallowed hard. Every time Pierre rolled up his sleeves, revealing lean muscle and tendons as he explained with total focus, the female audience members felt a faint flush rise to their cheeks.
Kwak Ji-chul glanced at Jennifer and asked Pierre,
"Is it because her eyes look like a deer's that everyone calls her that?"
"No. Because she melts every man's heart like deer antler velvet."
Jennifer, who had been automatically offering her usual seductive smile while the two men talked about her, froze as pure disbelief washed over her face.
"There he goes again. That ice-cold dad joke… Not funny, Pierre."
"Puhaha. I think it's hilarious. Why? Velvet, velvet."
Picasso, sketching the necessary makeup faces on a smart pad for the operation, snickered.
Then the team left the motel room and each member got to work in earnest. Son Jin-uk was fully absorbed in the film as well.
Yeon-woo's acting is completely on fire. Comparing it to his first drama shoot is almost embarrassing—he's grown that much. And So-hyun's transformation is real. It's the complete opposite of the characters she usually plays. This movie is fun. Moving from that tiny inn room out into the world is clearly meant to expand the film's universe. Classic Director Park Chan-hong.
He nodded, already estimating the box-office numbers.
Conservatively four million… no, if the second half holds up, it could hit six million.
He still didn't know how the latter half would play out, but so far the story was gripping and every character felt vividly alive. From there the film barreled forward at a breathless pace, refusing to give the audience a moment to catch their breath.
"Oh, hello there! Fancy meeting you in a place like this, senior!"
"Hm? Do I know you?"
"Kim Ji-hoon, class of '59. I introduced myself at the last alumni gathering."
"Ah, is that so?"
With natural, effortless acting, Pierre approached Gu, the right-hand man of Chairman Noh, and recorded a voice sample.
"Hmm, am I doing this wrong? I just can't seem to put any power into the swing."
"Miss, want me to show you a thing or two?"
"Oh my, I'd love that. I was taught properly, but somehow it just isn't working…"
Using golf practice as a pretext, Jennifer approached Park Kang-woo with perfect naturalness and swapped out his SIM card. Watching the whole thing on a monitor from a small storage room, Pierre reached into his pocket for a lighter-gun. Manager Kim Min-su, who had been quietly watching from the audience, felt an inexplicable rush of pride as he remembered the claw-machine shop.
Feels like I actually contributed to the shoot somehow. Nice.
The screen cut to the other members.
"Hey, put that over there. You finished recruiting people? No random nobodies—only solid ones."
"Yes, Team Leader. Only the pros who've worked with us before. All of 'em."
Junk Dealer's crew hustled around building the set and lining up con artists. In a corner Picasso picked up a piece of tableware and scowled.
"Hey, old man. I told you cheap dishes won't cut it. Get Norwegian ones. Norwegian."
"Kid, these are Norwegian."
"…They are? Thought so. The surface has that nice sheen. I was testing you."
Junk Dealer shook his head at Picasso and hurried off to fix something else.
"Idiot. I bought them at the market right down the street. Norwegian my ass."
They bickered constantly, yet together they transformed an old factory into a flawless party venue. As the film's buildup continued, the audience's curiosity only grew sharper. Film reporter Joo Yeo-ul felt the same.
I get that they're scamming Park Kang-woo, but what exactly are they preparing for? Can they even move this Chairman Noh person? No—if they could, Ryu Yeon-woo wouldn't have needed to sneak in and steal a voice sample.
Using the modulated voice, Pierre successfully impersonated Manager Gu and lured Park Kang-woo in. On screen the day of the final operation arrived, and Park Kang-woo stepped into the fabricated party venue. He passed through an elegant gate, climbed a high marble staircase, and entered the hall.
"Oh my, I thought you were a golf pro—turns out you're not?"
"Wait, aren't you the lady from the golf course?"
Their second "chance" meeting. This time Jennifer posed as a woman named Yoo Chae-yeon and began controlling Park Kang-woo like a puppet on her palm. Completely unaware, Kang-woo grew louder and more animated as the champagne glasses piled up—one, then two.
Then Pierre Choi appeared on screen.
"Ah, shit… What the hell?!"
"Oh dear, I'm so sorry. It's my first time somewhere this fancy—I was looking around and—"
Exactly according to plan, he bumped into Park Kang-woo and provoked him into losing his temper. Watching Ryu Yeon-woo's endlessly servile expression on the big screen, fan-café admin Lee Jin-ah nearly jumped.
My actor can make a face like that?
The characters in Summer's Closet and Star Beyond the River had been more similar than she realized—rich young masters who started off prickly with the heroine before eventually recognizing their own feelings. Classic tropes.
There's nothing like this expression on Cha Woo-joo or Seo Hui. It's so strange.
As a fan who had rewatched every single piece of footage featuring Ryu Yeon-woo countless times, Lee Jin-ah found herself startled and covered in goosebumps at every new face, every new expression Pierre Choi showed from the moment he first appeared.
The next sequence showed Park Kang-woo grabbing Pierre by the collar and dragging him toward the restrooms. Even while being hauled away, Pierre exchanged glances with Jennifer and pulled playful, exaggerated faces behind Kang-woo's back; the cross-cutting made the moment land perfectly.
Watching that scene, both director Park Chan-hong—who had staged it—and actor Ryu Yeon-woo—who had performed it—thought the same thing.
This shot was aiming for one very specific image…
Their worry proved unnecessary. Across the theater, countless audience members looked at Yeon-woo and arrived at the same conclusion: Pierre wasn't just named that way. The slightly flushed, drunken-looking makeup on his nose, the endlessly shifting expressions that still hid a mischievous core—the whole performance was both comic and faintly terrifying.
Exactly like a clown. Like Pierrot.
In the following shot, Park Kang-woo rounded the corner still gripping Pierre's collar—and was immediately clubbed unconscious. The screen went black.
With the blackout, a collective question mark seemed to appear above every head in the theater.
What? They put this much work into the con just to knock him out? Then why not just kidnap him from the start?