Luck-key
The movie we’re going to feature today is about a successful hit man who loses is memory after slipping on a bar soap in a public bath. This film is the South Korean action-comedy film released in 2016 titled LUCK-KEY directed by Lee Gye-Byeok with a duration of 1 hour and 52 minutes starring Yoo Hae-jin (Hyeong-wook), Lee Joon (Jae-seong) and Jo Yoon-hee (Rina).
On a rainy night while a catchy tune plays on the radio, professional hit man Hyeong-wook kills a man and hides him in the trunk of his car. The victim’s suitcase was abandoned in the middle of the road which was picked up by a mysterious man after the car drove off.
Meanwhile, In a small apartment in the same neighborhood the poor actor Jae-seong burns all his photos and prepares to end it all thinking that no one loves him and no one will notice that he is gone. However, he is disturbed of his landlady who is furious because he owes him rent for the past few months.
The way he lives like dirty life and how he stinks because he hasn’t bathed in a long time. Annoyed by the landlady’s insults Jae-seong decides to kill himself cleanly. He goes to public bath where he sees Hyeong-wook the famous hit man bathing next to him and notices his expensive watch.
Just by looking at him, Jae-seong can tell that he is a very rich man. A few moments later, Hyeong-wook slipped on a soap and lost consciousness when his head hit the floor and his locker key also fall. Seeing this Jae-seong took advantage of the situation.
His keys are replaced with Hyeong-wook’s and all his belongings are stolen including his wallet, suit and his car. The first thing Jae-seong does after that is to go to the landlady and pay off all his debts on the apartment with Hyeonh-wook’s money.
After paying off his debt he visits a woman from the theater where he used to work, hoping to impress her with his new wealth unfortunately the girl tells him that she is getting married next month which breaks his heart.
He realizes that using Hyeong-wook’s things won’t magically fix his life so he tries to return everything to Hyeong-wook who is currently being treated in the hospital but to his shock Hyeong-wook has amnesia from falling on the floor and calls himself Jae-seong because it’s the name they found on the health insurance.
He asks the real Jae-seong if he knows him but Jae-seong panics and leaves without telling Hyeong-wook the truth. Now that he’s felling better Hyeong-wook is allowed to leave the hospital except that he only has two pesos and expired health insurance.
So he couldn’t pay the bill luckily Rina the paramedic who took him to the hospital was very king and paid his bill on the condition that he had to pay it after he got his money from house. After that, Rina accompanies Hyeong-wook to Jae-seong apartment hoping that he will pay off his debt when he they get there.
During the flight, she tried to know him better by asking about his identity to which Hyeong-wook answered that his named was Jae-seong and that he was only 32 years old. However Rina finds it hard to believe Jae-seong because he looks older than his age.
After a while, the two finally arrive at Jae-seong’s messy, dirty, and smelly apartment and upon seeing his apartment Hyeong-wook won’t be able to return her money right away. After Rina leaves he tries to ask the neighbors about himself.
Hoping it would help him remember who really was and why he became a loser but after asking some neighbors he didn’t get much information although one thing was for sure the neighbors didn’t seem to like him. One even tried grumpy neighbor to attack Hyeong-wook but he defeats the man effortlessly which makes him realize that he has some martial art skills.
The next day, Rina returns to check on Hyeong-wook’s condition and to her shock she sees that his apartment is very different from yesterday. Now his room is very clean, the only thing Hyeong-wook has learned so far is that he enjoys cleaning and is very good with a knife.
Two qualities that give Rina an idea, She takes hyeong-wook to his mother’s small restaurant and convinces her to take him Hyeong-wook because they need help now that her grandmother is old and her siblings is also in school. Hyeong-wook accepts the job and the first thing he is made to do is always smile so the customers don’t get scared.
Meanwhile, Jae-seong decides to check out Hyeong-wook’s apartment and is amazed to see its fancy interior after finding some uniforms in the closet. He turns on the TV only to find no other channels except a camera stream spying on a beautiful girl named Eun-Joo is currently doing yoga.
For the next few days, Jae-seong spends his days eating, drinking at sleeping with little intention of cleaning the apartment. When he wakes up he is surprised to find that Eun-Joo is killing herself on screen but in reality she pretended to do it on different ways before returning to her yoga.
Later he decides to take a bottle of wine from Hyeong-wook’s collection, only to find a secret room behind the wall after he pulls the right bottle. This room is full of weapons, fake IDs, cellphones and several security cameras spying on Eun-Joo which further convinces him that Hyeong-wook is a policeman investigating illegals. Which is the activity of the company Eun-Joo used to work for and the woman is the witness he must protect.
Despite all this, Jae-seong falls in love with the beautiful woman and takes a liking to her. Therefore he starts investigating Eun-Joo and eventually learns that she lives in the same apartment building wasting no time he goes to the woman’s apartment to meet her in person.
Meanwhile at the restaurant Hyeong-wook became successful, his knife skills allowed him to create food that had a very nice presentation and this attracted a new wave of customers to their business. One night Hyeong-wook turns a new page in the calendar.
He found out that he had made an appointment for the 25th of the month and decided to go to see if he could find out more about himself. It turns out that this appointment was a meeting with some producers who picked up some actors in their van to act as extras in their movie.
Hyeong-wook tries his best to play various roles but he is so rotten in all of them that the director is very irritated. Hyeong-wook returns to the restaurant to apologized to Rina’s family for not coming to work today.
He also tells them that before he lost his memory he was actually an actor who was just starting his career now he wants to continue his acting but Rina’s family is not convinced that Hyeong-wook is an actor and they suspect his brain condition is worsening.
However, he began honing his acting skills on the sidelines of his job as a head chef at the restaurant. In the end his hard work also paid off as his acting skills improved so much that the director of the TV show liked his performance very much.
In addition to this, his skill in martial arts really helped him in the action scenes because here it is not surprising that he was promoted from extra to supporting role in a short period of time. The TV show that Hyeong-wook is a part of was watched by Rina’s family as well as the loyal costumers at the restaurant and they were all impressed by his appearance besides this he also asked Rina to be his manager so it was inevitable that they would spend a lot of time together and because of this Rina started to fall in love with Hyeong-wook.
With the increasing success of the TV shows Hyeong-wook, the director finally decided to make him the lead actor in the show. One day Hyeong-wook encountered a difficult challenge where he had to do a kissing scene with a beautiful actress. He kept making mistakes in this scene so the director postponed the shoot until he was ready. Besides, he often stares at the female actress’s chest rather than her eyes but Rina is there for Hyeong-wook.
When he came home from filming he immediately asked for help in rehearsing the kissing scene. Rina happily kissed Hyeong-wook because she had felling for him a for a long time. The practice of kissing Rina was really effective because the next day he successfully did the kissing scene making the director even more proud of him.
The scene switches to Jae-seong who hasn’t changed much except that he sees Eun-Joo always going to someone with a suitcase every Thursday night as if waiting for someone to pick her up but that person never came so in the end he always comes home to her apartment. Even though he knows about it Jae-seong still tries to approach Eun-Joo in various ways that make her feel uncomfortable in his presence.
However, this didn’t make him give up right away he continued to see her whenever he had a chance and gave her various gifts, as time passed Eun-joo also started to open her heart to Jae-seong.
One day Jae-seong answers Hyeong-wook’s ringing cellphone and it turns out that the call is from the businessmen who hired Hyeong-wook to take care of Eun-Joo. He is curious what these people really want him so he decides to meet them in person. While pretending to be Hyeong-wook to his shock he found out that they don’t want to protect Eun-joo but rather than they want to kill her after hearing all this shocking information Jae-seong finally realizes that Hyeong-wook is not really a police but a hit man.
After thinking for a while, Jae-seong decided to move to another apartment and takes all of Hyeong-wook’s money. After this he meets Eun-Joo and reveals to her who he really is much to her surprise. However he promises to do everything he can to protect her from Hyeong-wook so he wants her to join him in his new apartment but unbeknownst to them one of the clients saw them hugging each other.
Soon the businessmen find another hit man to replace Hyeong-wook who they find unreliable. They call all the hit men they know but it’s revealed that all the hit men they’ve heard of are Hyeong-wook’s other names and they’re calling his different phones that he keeps in his apartment.
The next day Hyeong-wook invites Rina to a picnic to celebrate his success when they reach their destination she seems to be enjoying her time with Hyeong-wook and his family as they are on their way home. Hyeong-wook hears one of the radio stations playing his favorite song and remembered that he used to listen to this song all the time when he was still working as a hit man because of this his memory slowly returned until he finally remembered that one he is a professional hit man.
After Rina’s family returned to their home, Hyeong-wook hurriedly left for his apartment and found his place messy and dirty. He also sees CCTV footage showing Jae-seong living there for the past few months and is often seen with his target Eun-Joo.
Soon Hyeong-wook finds Jae-seong new apartment where he catches up with the impostor with Eun-Joo. At first he seems angry he beats up Jae-seong and blames him for stealing everything he owns but calms down that he revealed to Jae-seong who he really is.
Based on Hyeong-wook’s explanation he is not really a hit man, What Hyeong-wook actually does is to share with the victims the money he is paid for these assassinations where he gives them fake documents, provide a way to escape and get a new life away from the people who want to kill them.
The mysterious man from the rainy night who took the suitcase is revealed to be the victim himself who is preparing to leave and this is why Eun-Joo continues to practice impersonation using acting to making his death believable when the time comes for Hyeong-wook to kill him.
It turns out that Eun-Joo is an employee at a company and is a witness to the corruption of her superiors. Which is why the company’s leaders hire Hyeong-wook to kill her. Now that the client finds out about Eun-joo and Jae-seong ‘s relationship. Hyeong-wook must think of another way to save them.
After thinking for a while, Hyeong-wook finally comes up with a way to save them by planning a fake murder so they can all start a new life. When everything is ready Hyeong-wook calls his clients and orders them to watch how he kills Eun-Joo and Jae-seong.
A few moments later he went to Rina to break off their relationship because he didn’t want her to be in a relationship with a man with a dark past like him. However, he didn’t explain why and didn’t even tell Rina about his job which made her very upset of a woman.
After saying goodbye to Rina, he goes to an empty building where he will pretend to kill Eun-Joo and Jae-seong unbeknownst to him Rina is secretly following him to the location as Rina walks into the building she sees Hyeong-wook and Jae-seong pretending to fight in front of clients.
Worried about Hyeong-wook she tries to stop the fight and asks for an explanation. Hyeong-wook pretends he doesn’t know him and insults Rina to get her to leave but she gets even more angry when Hyeong-wook tells her no other way Hyeong tells Jae-seong to go ahead with the plan.
So Jae-seong rushes him with a knife and Hyeong-wook pretends to save Rina by crossing the weapon. Now together they are in the right place Eun-Joo presses a button and a container falls on top to make it appear that they were crushed but the truth is the container was holed and empty and the four of them were safely standing inside to make everything more believable they let fake blood come out from the container. Fortunately no that the clients check if Hyeong-wook and others are dead.
They believe that the four are dead and immediately leave the warehouse. When the situation calms down Eun-Joo and Jae-seong finally hug and kiss while Hyeong-wook confesses the truth to Rina including his real name and age appearing to be 45 years old. Hyeong-wook has forgotten his past as a hit man and prefers to work as a chef at Rina’s restaurant where he is accepted as part of the family.
He also continued working as an actor and when the time came he would fight the main villain in the story, He’s happy to find out that it’s Jae-seong and that’s where the movie ends. I hope you like it. Thank you very much.
Main Cast of Luck-key
| Yoo Hae-jin Hyeong-wook |
| Jo Yoon-hee Rina |
| Lee Joon Jae-seong |
| Lim Ji-yeon Eun-Joo |
| Kim Min-sang Movie Director |
| Sung Byung-sook Rina’s mom |
| Park Seung-tae Rina’s grandmother |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- When was Luck-Key released?
- October 2016
- How long is Luck-Key?
- 1 hour and 52 minutes
- Who stars in Luck-Key?
- Yoo Hae-jin (Hyung-wook)
- Lee Joon (Jae-sung)
- Jo Yun-hie (Rina)
- Who directed Luck-Key?
- Lee Gye-byeok
- Who was the producer of Luck-Key?
- Syd Lim
- Who wrote Luck-Key?
- Yoon-Mi Jang
- Kenji Uchida
- Who was the composer for Luck-Key?
- Jun-seok Bang
- Who was the cinematographer for Luck-Key?
- Tae-Kyung Kim
- Who was the editor of Luck-Key?
- Meeyeon Han
- Jinmo Yang
- What genre is Luck-Key?
- action
- comedy
- crime
