Miss and Mrs. Cop 걸캅스

Heavy handed messages of sexual inequality in the guise of a female buddy cop comedy.

(aka Girl Cops)

Geol Kapseu

Directed by Jung Da-won

Starring: Lee Sung-kyung, Ra Mi-ran, Sooyoung, Wi Ha-joon

Approx. 107 mins

South Korea, 2019

Miss and Mrs. Cop is a massive missed opportunity in being a commentary of the sexism within society but in the end it becomes a superficial critique, hammering the unfairness of society with the subtlety of a bulldozer.

Mi-yeong (Ra Mi-ran) is a badass police officer and is the shining light in giving recognition to other female police officers but after getting married she has faded into obscurity and now works in the complaints department with her good friend Jang-mi (Sooyoung). Mi-yeong’s sister in law, Ji-hye (Lee Sung-kyung) is a rookie police officer working on mundane cases under a department that only cares about their point ranking than any actual police work. Ji-hye has a knack for getting into trouble and after one operation gone wrong she is transferred to the complaints department to work with her sister in law Mi-yeong. One day a female comes in to complaints and leaves her phone then vacates and attempts suicide. Mi-yeong and Ji-hye’s suspicion is aroused and they uncover from the phone that there is a forced sex video ready to be made public if hitting a certain benchmark of likes. Defying any orders they decide to investigate the case themselves uncovering a seedy group of individuals raping girls and filming the exploits then posting it online. Without the help of any willing police departments they finally uncover the individuals and vow to take them down for the good of all woman.

Ra Mi-ran gives a strong performance and her comic timing is strong her banter and feud with Lee Sung-kyung’s, Ji-hye is fun and on most occasions hits the mark. While Ra Mi-ran is a pretty consistent character throughout, Lee Sung-kyung is given more to work with, where she is required to be this serious character and then fluctuating to heartfelt and emotional at key points. In fact performance wise everyone is strong except for Wi Ha-joon whose villainess turn is rather underwhelming lacking in any real menace and some of that can be attributed to the weakly written character. The villain is pretty much a blank slate and his actions are never justified or explained making him feel more a product for the protagonist than a genuine character.

As with the current trend of strong female lead films which all tries to make statements of the sexual inequality, Miss and Mrs. Cop fails to convey its rather interesting subject matter effectively. All men in the film are painted as evil, selfish or stupid individuals and have little redeeming factors and they are just catalyst for the females emotional tirades or spurring their desires. As with most films coming out of South Korea production is sleek and the budget has been used in all the right places, with fight scenes, car chase and shoot outs all playing out. Yet none of the action satisfies, the fight scene are heavily edited and cuts are at very odd places sometimes jump cutting and the car chase lacks any sense of danger or speed. The film is a foremost a comedy and by and large it is fun that will elicit chuckles but nothing too memorable.

Preventing the film from being highly enjoyable is the rather moronic moments scattered throughout the film that feels more fitting in a kids cartoon show than a polished feature film. There’s a scene where the protagonists gets captured and bound but instead of easily killing them there and then the villains decide to set the place on fire and of course, spoiler alert, the heroes manage to escape unharmed. There’s a computer hacker able to hack into security feeds allowing them to chase the villain via the cities security cameras, the scene is heavily edited to convey tension but it is awkwardly played out with the hacker frantically clicking her keyboard which makes no sense at all, surely it’s only a few clicks to flick between different camera feeds. During one moment the complaints department transforms into a headquarters with all staff utilized to chase the down the villains but this too makes little sense, with the commander issuing random orders but what it really boils down to is a group of people watching security feeds. Again this scene is supposed elicit tension but it comes off as absurd. The finale sees a throwdown at a highly congested shopping mall but as our two female protagonists gets beaten up by a single man none of the crowds intervene or do anything other than film it with their phones or the lack of security intervention is rather illogical. And the less we talk about the woefully inept police force the better. Its moments like these that stop the film from becoming a rather enjoyable experience.

These nothing particularly inherently bad about the film per se, the film is slick and polished with some fantastic performances but its hap hazard story and message feels rather insulting opposed enlightening. The moments of absurdity greatly harms the film but if you can stomach the aforementioned problems then you may enjoy the film.