Cha Eun-jin (Eun-Kyung Shin) is a high ranking gangster in the South Korean underworld, all the more remarkable in that she is a woman. However, she might as well be a man such is her skill at fighting, during which she uses large pairs of scissors to assist her. Yet Eun-jin is about to discover her feminine side when she takes a phone call one day to tell her that her long lost sister, who she hasn't seen since childhood, has been finally found. She is delighted, but her joy is shortlived when she visits her sister in hospital to hear that she is suffering from terminal cancer. The sister has one final wish before she dies, and it's an unusual request for Eun-jin: she has to get married, which is going to prove difficult as she doesn't even have a boyfriend. So who will the lucky chap be?
A big enough hit in South Korea to spawn two sequels, My Wife is a Gangster is an odd mix of genres. Yes, the action is there, with its anti-heroine gracefully spinning through the air and knocking seven bells out of her opponents, but it's also a broad comedy when it gets down to the business of finding - and keeping - a spouse for her. Known as Jopog Manura in its native territory, it was scripted by Hyo-jing Kang and Moon-saeng Kim, and the narrative is not exactly a smooth ride; though many parts are appropriately slick in their execution it's probably in the humorous sections that all concerned are at their most comfortable.
Finding a mate for this gangster is no easy task, but oddly it's never considered, not even by the writers, that Eun-jin could be a lesbian - she's just a comically masculine woman who dresses in business suits and keeps her hair short; compare her to the other female characters her age in the cast, who mainly dress up and hang on the arms of their boyfriends. But it must be done, so Eun-jin receives fashion tips from a makeup artist and goes out the next night explaining that she didn't bother removing her makeup from yesterday seeing as how she would be wearing it tonight (!). Eventually, after a scuffle where she is "saved" by a young man who thought she was being attacked (she was doing the attacking), it seems as though this would-be rescuer might be Mr Right.
He is actually Mr Kang (Sang-Myeon Park) who up until this point has been unlucky in love... not that this situation is really about to change, he just isn't aware of it. Before long a wedding has been arranged, and the big day arrives, complete with a martial arts gang battle going on in the background that is almost ignored as a celebratory display. Eun-jin plans to have the marriage annulled as soon as her sister dies, but now she's supposed to get pregnant, yet how can she when she hasn't even consummated the arrangement with her increasingly confused husband? All the while a rival gangster is gearing up for a takeover bid which will lead to an abrupt lurch into sentimentality that in some eyes may be ill-advised. Add that to a stop-start plot that pauses for action a little too rarely, and you're left with an strange combination. Entertaining as far as it goes, but it could have gone easier.
[Premier Asia's Region 2 DVD has an audio commentary and trailers as extras.]
