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| ▲ This photo, provided by a film distribution company "Showbox", shows actor Kim Sung-kyun. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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▲ This photo, provided by Showbox, shows a scene from "SINKHOLE." (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ This photo, provided by Showbox, shows a scene from "SINKHOLE." (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Yonhap) -- Struggling for survival covered in soil and soaked with water, actor Kim Sung-kyun portraited a heart-touching paternal love in “SINKHOLE,” an upcoming disaster-comedy blockbuster.
Kim said on an online interview Wednesday that “Sink Hole” was physically the toughest production he has ever taken part in.
“The hardest part was that my body felt so tired. In this sense, the film is like an ‘I did it’ badge of honor to me,” he answered.
In the film, Kim plays the role of Dong-won who settles into a new house with his wife and son at last in 11 years, but the house plunges 500 meters underground into a large sinkhole.
Trapped in the hole that sucked a whole villa, Dong-won moves around the broken pieces of furniture and digs concrete blocks. He swims around the hole filled with heavy rains to save his son and climbs up a rail of a broken building.
“All the scenes that made me accidently drink water were painful,” said Kim.
“Though we could take breaks in warm waters, it was cold winter and when shooting, we had to be back in cold waters wearing wet clothes, so it was freezing. The cold was the toughest part.”
But he also added that it was a great experience playing the role of a man struggling in crisis situations.
“I like SFs and blockbusters. Also, I had an excitement over playing a role of someone in such crisis. I have never been a character who overcomes hardships under difficult situations. “SINKHOLE” gave me just the right role. I feel satisfied with scenes in which we can see the characters having difficulties.”
Dong-won was not a man strong enough to get through the crisis from the first place. He was an ordinary person feeling proud of himself for finally buying his own house and always quarreling with his neighbor Man-soo (Cha Seung-won).
Kim said that Dong-won’s characteristic is ‘ordinary.’ And the love for his son as a father made him forget all fears.
“I kept hugging and piggy-backing the young actor. We were almost always together that he felt like my child.”
“People usually do not scold another’s child, but worried of the child actor’s safety, I snapped at him saying, ‘hold on to me tightly’, even though the actor’s mother was there. I realized that I was really caring for him as if he were a son of mine,” said Kim.
“When I first settled into a semi-basement, like Dong-won, I felt so happy that I stayed the night in the empty house. Even the walls and the floors weren’t pasted yet.”
“Dong-won would have been so upset having lost his dreamhouse, which he had waited for 11 years. But I think his family would’ve felt more important to him. He must have struggled for survival to reunite with his wife and son, no matter what. He may have lost the house but thought that he should at least protect his family.”
The film has received invitations from the 74th Locarno International Film Festival, the 20th New York Asian Film Festival and the 27th Sarajevo Film Festival.
“The main point of the film is the love for the family and many critics must have found it quite touching and noteworthy,” said the actor.
Kim, who is said to have been an unfamiliar actor to the public for a long time, started gaining attention on “Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time” (2011) with his old-fashioned hairstyle.
Later, Kim attracted popularity with the TV series “Reply 1994” (2014) in which he played as a naïve college student who looks older than his age and has just moved from the countryside to Seoul. Also, in 2015 he was widely loved for the role of a father with two sons in “Reply 1988” (2015).
He continued to participate in various works for various roles. Kim became a troublemaker 30-year-old son in “The Preparation” (2017) with Go Doo-shim, a son of a politically powerful family in the Joseon Era in “Fengshui” (2017) and a Japanese General in “Hansan” (2020).
Kim said that he now wants to actively appeal himself to a role rather than to wait for a proposal, as he did until now, after he heard that Lee Kwang-soo, who was also cast for the film, wished to work with him.
“I used to choose from what I was proposed with. Then I thought that I should more actively search for my roles. I have been usually cast for historical dramas or serious characters, but these days, I want to take ordinary, and familiar roles like Dong-won.”
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