Now available on VOD, Ktown Cowboys is a fun, low-key coming-of-age dramedy centered around a group of friends navigating life in LA Koreatown. They show us how they party through korean saunas, after-hour clubs, host bars and booking clubs. As the friends party, they each deal with their own personal plights while coming to terms with growing up.
The film is based off / a sequel to the popular web-series of the same name that started all the way back in 2010, and it’s hard not to admire how far Ktown Cowboys has come. Firstly, don’t worry if you haven’t seen the web-series (guilty), it won’t effect your viewing of the film. With an opening voice-over you get caught up to speed and [re]introduced to the main characters and what their main quirks are. The film is told from the perspective of Jason (Shane Yoon) a young businessman who’s company is in trouble. His friends are Danny (Danny Cho), Sunny (Sunn Wee), Peter (Peter Jae) and Robby (Bobby Choy). They’ve grown up together in LA, partying hard and chasing girls, but now they’ve got to be more responsible and take their own paths, but each one is discovering it isn’t as easy as they thought it would be.
Written by Danny Cho, Ktown Cowboys attempts to tell the story of growing up and partying in Koreatown, LA but it might be lost on some. For anyone worried about a culture barrier, this shouldn’t really be an issue as many times in the film the action is paused so that one of the characters can stop to tell the audience what exactly is going on in the current situation. Whether is be a phrase that is used to describe someone or the environment that they’re in, it’s a helpful vice and adds more to the film. The authentic elements in the film have come under some scrutiny, with some observers having been vocal about the cringe-worthy elements of the story, so perhaps it’s best just to take it all as exaggerated fun rather than the gospel about how Korean culture in LA is. The film can be a little on the heavy side at times and the tonal shifts can be jarring and uneven. For a character who is described as being charismatic by his uncle part-way through the film, Jason doesn’t feel like the strongest lead, and perhaps it would have been better for Danny Cho to allow his own character to be the commentator on the action, offering his viewpoint from the outside, which would have given his character more depth and screen-time than what we ultimately got.
Ktown Cowboys works as a stand alone film, but curiosity might make you want to go and watch the web-series (again, guilty). Upon a quick glance, once the film had finished I found it easy to see how far the team has come and what they were able do with just a little money behind them. Aside from a potential major character missing from the film with no explanation (I imagine after watching all the episodes of the web-series this may make sense) writer Danny Cho hasn’t allowed money to let him stray from the source material. In the same vein, director Daniel Park seems to continue with the blueprint from the web-series, just working with a bigger budget, which means better production value, and, just like the film itself, that’s all to be applauded.
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