Squid Game

Squid Game (2021), a nine episode South Korean series, is exuberant garish trash.  The show is hyper-violent and sadistic, but it has engaging characters. spectacularly designed sets, and brilliant;y conceived and executed action scenes.  The program is state-of-the-art entertainment and, although it is foolish, a vicious combination of The Most Dangerous Game and torture porn thrillers like the Saw franchise, the show's power is undeniable.  Squid Game demonstrates the importance of interesting and likeable characters -- programs of this sort are dependent upon audience identification with the protagonists of the show and our affection for them; as in professional sports, we need to have a team for which to root and Squid Game provides this satisfaction in spades.

The show's premise is simple enough.  A group of down-and-out characters are recruited to participate in violent games.  The protagonists are desperate to make a few bucks (or the South Korean equivalent thereof) and, after being slapped around by a sinister figure in the subway, a well-dressed man who plays a game with the hero in which he gets to slap the man's face each time he loses the competition (it has something to do with throwing down some sort of packet to make another packet bounce off the pavement), the action gets underway at a remote island staffed by an army of robotic soldiers armed with guns and wearing inscrutable masks.  These forces are led by a figure clad in black, face concealeed behind an elegant cubist mask -- the so-called "front man".  The island has a huge dormitory for the participants in the games, about 500 people initially. (The players are transported to the island unconscious after being gassed in the vehicles that pick them up to be taken to the island.)  The set at the island is like the lair of one of James Bond's nemesis super-villains, an elaborate system of candy-colored steps and doorways, a Piranesi-like maze, although brightly lit, through which the poor players trudge to the tune of the "Blue Danube Waltz".  There are various playgrounds, also pastel-colored, where the action takes place.  Everything is designed to look like a high-tech primary school playground and the characters all wear uni-sex uniforms bearing their numbers.  #1 is a very feeble old man; #456 is the show's hero, the kind and honest, but hang-dog gambling addict, Seong Gi-hun.  (This actor, who reminds me of a young Jimmy Stewart, is so appealing that he will no doubt become an important international performer on the strength of his performance in this show).  Other principal characters are Cho Sang-Woo, a young man from the neighborhood where Seong Gi-hun lived as a boy and the kid from the 'hood, who went to college,and became successful as a ruthless business man -- he is someone whom everyone admires, although as the show progresses it becomes apparent that he will commit cold-blooded murder and betrayal to survive the horrific games that the participants are forced to play.  Kang Sae-byeah is refugee from North Korea, embittered and, also, ruthless although we find that a trace of humanity remains in her.  There's a nasty gangster with a serpent tattooed on the side of his throat (Deok-su) and a half-crazed older woman who offers herself sexually to other players to achieve an advantage.  The principal characters, that is, those who survive the first three or four games, are rounded out with a cop who has infiltrated the nightmarish island playground (Jun-Ho) and a Muslim, a Syrian refugee, the endearing Abdul Ali.  The show is effective because these characters are convincingly delineated, act in a way that seems plausible, and engage our sympathies.  If the show wasn't well-written with good characters, it would just be a festival of torture and murder and, probably, would be unwatchable.  

The games on the island are hideous parodies of playground amusements.  There are three general rules:  (1) Once a game is started it can not be stopped until it is concluded; (2) players who lose are eliminated -- we quickly learn that this means they either die in the game or are shot in the head by the staff upon losing; (3) the players can vote as to whether they wish to continue and, by a simple majority vote, the games will end and the participants will be returned to their ordinary lives in Seoul  Every time a player is killed, a jackpot of currency suspended in a golden globe over the dormitory floor is flooded with more money -- ultimately, the winner of the game will take home several billion dollars.  The last rule is the most insidious -- the players participate in the lethal games on the basis of their free-will; this is what they have signed-up for.  Indeed, after the horrific first game in which several hundred competitors are killed, the participants have had too much and they vote to end the competition.  All survivors are returned to Seoul, but in a powerful, and depressing episode called "Hell", most of them run afoul of the same weaknesses and oppression that compelled them originally to enlist in the games and, so, the great majority of them solicit their handlers to return to the island and the deadly sports practiced there.  The games that follow:  a terrifying tug of war over an abyss, a race over a bridge made with panels of tempered and untempered glass (you can stand on the tempered glass; the untempered will break underfoot propelling you to the ground sixty feet below), and, finally, a savage brawl between the two survivors in the rain, the titular "Squid Game" -- all of these episodes are filmed with the utmost conviction and are as realistically plausible as the horrifying games of Russian Roulette in the movie The Deer Hunter.  Some of the games have a particularly fearsome aspect:  after the "tug of war" competition encouraged people to form teams based on loyalty and physical strength, the competitors decide that the next game, unknown to them, will be something similar and so the players choose for their partners people whom they trust -- in one case, a husband and wife form a team.  But the game is marbles involving competition between  the partners and the loser will be murdered by the staff.  This game is intended to destroy any remaining trust and loyalty between the participants.  The goal is to reduce the players to a state of feral paranoia.  In one episode, this is accomplished by the red-clad staff on the island giving the competitors only one hard-boiled egg and a bottle of water for supper.  This leads to players stealing from another and, ultimately, a vicious riot in which about forty of the competitors are beaten to death.  The sequence of games is concealed from the players with the result that attributes beneficial in an earlier game may be the exact opposite of what is required for the next competition.  

There are several subplots that are interesting and compel attention but that ultimately go nowhere.  An intrepid cop infiltrates the staff on the island, has various adventures, but, then, gets rubbed out (possibly by his own brother) in the penultimate episode.  A lot of footage is devoted to his attempts to navigate the weird world of the armed gunmen supervising the games, but the narrative never develops into anything significant.  A doctor playing the game is recruited to dissect fresh corpses to deliver the organs by diver to Chinese boats waiting off-shore -- this plot also leads nowhere, although it provides some diving gear to be used by the cop when he (unsuccessfully) tries to escape from the island.  (The autopsy - organ harvesting plot also allows the show to indulge in some indelibly gory imagery which also seems redundant in the context of the gruesomely violent games.)  The last several episodes have unnecessary elements -- what does it add to the show to bring into the action a group of utterly decadent oligarchs who wear elegant animal masks and wager on the outcome of the games?  This aspect of the film incorporates all known cliches and stereotypes, including sexual degeneracy, about the super-rich -- it's a bit like out-takes from the orgies in Eyes Wide Shut.  Some explanations given for the proceedings in the last episode, which seems too long, are unsatisfying.  When the sole survivor sees someone being recruited for the games in the subway, he saves the man by taking from him the card necessary to contact those managing the spectacle.  Later, the hero turns back from boarding a plane setting up the inevitable sequel -- in this show, he will infiltrate the games again as a participant in order to destroy them.  (At least, this is what the ending suggests.)

The series is produced with utter conviction.  It's full of bizarre nasty details.  Corpses are loaded up into caskets decorated with pinkish ribbons like gift boxes.  There's an underground crypt that serves as a crematorium where the losers are burned to ash.  The walls of the dormitory are decorated with schematic and cheery diagrams of the children's games that we know to be horrifying.  Squid Game has the courage of its perverse convictions -- the show is willing to pause for extended periods to detail quiet interactions between the players.  (In the last episode, a game is played in which everything is staked on whether passers-by will will try to help an drunk who is freezing to death on a street corner -- although this isn't as gaudy as the ultra-violent games, this sequence is also brilliantly produced and very suspenseful.)  It may be that the series is a commentary on Trump's form of capitalism -- one guy wins everything; every one else is a pathetic loser.  In a shamelessly hypocritical manner, the show seems to be critical of TV programs like American Ninja -- that is, reality shows in which game participants engage in feats of dexterity and strength in playground-like settings.  Implicitly, the show condemns the viewers for watching it.  But you can't look away.