Movie: My Girlfriend is an Agent

This is also a commentary of the movie so expect spoilers ahead.

My Girlfriend is an Agent, also known as 7^th Grade Civil Servant, is a 2009 South Korean comedy film. Originally I expected it to be a rendition of Mr. and Mrs. Smith but this is definitely a story of its own. The gist of the plot is that we have a spy too committed to her job that she loses her boyfriend who has no clue of her real identity. They meet again in three years, but unknown to her, that time skip had him sent overseas to complete a spy mission of his own. They banter back and forth in a hilarious bid to renew their relationship all the while too blind to realise that both are agents sent to target the same person.

This movie was received relatively well, though frankly I admit it felt like a drag in some scenes. It only held my attention for as long as it did because the leads, Kang Ji-Hwan and Kim Ha-neul carried their performances well in all aspect of comedy, drama and romance; even those well-developed awkward moments. Some of my trusted sources had given it a fairly low score and naturally, that was enough to delay me watching it. The reason why I picked it up in 2013 was only for 2 reasons; first, Kang Ji-Hwan, and second, I miss his antics. He’s such a comic story. It doesn’t hurt to check this movie out if only for the laughs and a bit of that Kang Ji-Hwan.

Summary and Commentaries

A wedding photo shoot takes place beside the Han River (I think?) where NIS (National Intelligence Services) agents - our photographer, bride and groom included - are stationed in all directions ready to bust an illegal exchange. The bride, Ahn Su-Ji, receives a phone call from her scrawny soft-spoken nerd of a boyfriend, Lee Jae-Joon, who is currently at the airport asserting to leave Korea. Caught at a bad time, Su-Ji brushes it aside without a second thought and only moments later we witness a hilarious juxtaposition of her in a cat and mouse chase along the river while boyfriend Jae-Joon conflictedly spams her voicemail. How do I love that as her chase becomes more intense, the angrier our originally soft-spoken Jae-Joon becomes? He yells at her for always lying about being busy and eating lunch at Jeju Island. I just admire how Kang Ji-Hwan carries his acting here. Screw looking cool because he sure can look cool while looking stupid.

Having fulfilled her duty, Su-Ji races off to the airport hoping to catch Jae-Joon's unexpected departure. Only upon arrival, airport security are left bewildered after seeing a bride in all her white glory running with a gun strapped to her thigh. Way to attract unwanted attention. That surely left her bound and brooding. Back home, she throws daggers on the dartboard at the feeling of being abandoned.

Three years later Su-Ji has herself a brand new man! Nuu... but I’m totally biased over Jae-Joon! Amusingly, Team Leader Hong tells her to break it off with him and I agree. The new man is disturbingly almost perfect. Every single member of his family just happen to be conveniently out of reach. What? No annoying in-laws? That definitely is a huge plus. Su-Ji receives a new mission over a meal with her new boyfriend and feigns an excuse (she pretends to be a Japanese travel agent).

The mission is to track down Dr. Roh, a top researcher out to trade for a huge wad of cash a vaccine that could mutate everything in the country within 6 minutes if exposed to room temperature. Hot. Damn. Disguised as a janitor in the men's restroom, Su-Ji injects a tracking device on the Dr.'s butt while he was urinating. How do you not feel that?! While doing so, she notices a familiar uh... watergun in the next urinal and Su-Ji actually takes a closer look at it. Haha. Sure enough, her suspicions proved accurate finding it belonged to none other than Jae-Joon. Unexpectedly meeting Su-Jin in the men's restroom surprised him and he actually covered his mouth with his hand while it's still dripping wet. Ewww haha. Angry for leaving her, Su-Ji beats him until both end up at the police station.

They banter back and forth at the police station while the police simply watch on like it was a korean drama. Jae-Joon points out a time he saw her trailing after a man when she had originally told him she was at Jeju Island. The police agree with him. Had they been in Jae-Joon's shoes they also would have broken off the relationship. As they part ways Jae-Joon leaves his calling card with Su-Jin misinterpreting her to be an actual janitor and simply wanting to help her find a better job. The tension in this scene is so real despite the comedy underlying all the secrecy and misunderstanding. 

We find in the next scene that Jae-Joon is in fact an NIS agent sent to Russia three years ago because of his amazing profiling skills. He had come to the Harimao Overseas Operations unit to report back to the Chief, Won-Seok. As a rookie, he gets patronized by the Chief. How dare he sit or stand, open or close his lap top, whenever he wanted? So Jae-Joon is literally stuck in this awkward position with his cute baby lap top half opened:

We also learn he’s a momma’s boy big time! Adorable. 

Jae-Joon visits his friend who works at the DVD store only to end up stuck phoning clients in his place for their overdue DVDs. He comes across Su-Ji’s late DVDs and rings her in the middle of a date with her new boyfriend. Hilariously both conversations become one sided as she speaks in Japanese using her guise as a Japenese agent, and he – not understanding much – persists that she return those damn DVDs or she’ll be facing a huge fine before stiffly hanging up. However, when she finally gets to the DVD store Jae-Joon had run off because Chief Won-Seok got bitter about his ridiculous habit of putting passwords on all his files.

That night, eager to prove himself Jae-Joon volunteers to plant a camera where the Russian crook, Count, is meeting one of his associates. Jae-Joon becomes a nervous wreck, even speaking to the microphone while in the same room as the Russians. Hah, way to be discreet. Unfortunately his efforts were futile. Later on, Su-Ji returns home to find Jae-Joon waiting for her, and she chases him out.

The following day Jae-Joon realises that they couldn't fish information out from the Russians the previous night because the Count had actually been communicating to his associate via the playing cards laid out in front of them. This piece of information impresses his boss and Jae-Joon sucks up to him just to spite Chief Won-Seok. Hah. This lands him the job of trailing the Count, much to Chief Won-Seok's dismay. Jae-Joon poses as a taxi driver in order to trail him, but to avoid a woman trying to get into his taxi he moves it and ends up in front of the Count's vehicle. Won-Seok: “Are you escorting him?!”. Haha. 

The trade was to take place at an amusement park, and Jae-Joon hides behind a small pamphlet while he unknowingly sits next to Dr. Roh who was the recipient of the trade. Ultimately his suspicious manner is noticed. The Count heads in the opposite direction thus aborting the exchange with the doctor. Jae-Joon goes after him while at the same time catching a glimpse Su-Ji  in a pregnant disguise.

The Count leads him in a room and Jae-Joon trips on some military displays. As he gets up he finds the barrel of a gun cocked to his temple. He surrenders then realises the gun was part of a mannequin. Haha. Su-Ji, meanwhile, enters a haunted house but gets lost in a marauding wave of girls screaming in all directions. Back at their respective bases, both Su-Ji and Jae-Joon get reprimanded for losing their targets. On top of that Jae-Joon discovered that all Harimao agents except him had guns. Upset, he protests for this right to also own one. Was he ready to own one? Won-seok throws Jae-Joon a shirt to wear and tests his aptitude which he fails miserably. Won-Seok points the gun at him. Just when I thought he was bluffing he shoots Jae-Joon on the chest. That’s so hardcore. Fortunately, the shirt was bulletproof but it still left a horrible mark.

After cheating death once, he visits Su-Ji only to be told she’s going to marry someone else. Jae-Joon is left to contemplate on this though he is no longer our soft-spoken nerd. He gets into her door and tells her like a man that when he was close to death all he could think about was her and that he loves her. That was enough to win her heart back. Yay! Things start getting a little hot (rawr) until they both realise they still had their NIS underlayers on. They undress in separate rooms still adamant to hide their spy-identity from the other and eventually they end up sitting awkwardly at the end of the bed talking instead.

Kang Ji-Hwan with a teddy bear? Cute. Surely that’s not to emphasise his innocence because they’ve done it enough that Su-Ji even knows what his watergun looks like. He carefully began to reveal his identity to her by telling her he’s got a secret confession to make which she has to be open-minded about. Unfortunately mid-confession he gets cut short when he receives a phone call from the base and has to leave immediately. She begins to protest only to receive a similar phone call at her end. Suddenly she's even helping him dress.

Later that night they both end up in the same night club. Jae-Joon tracks the Count down and flirts with an associate Russian woman to extract some information. As Harimao tries to view her profile they get blocked by one of Jae-Joon's OCD passwords. Unfortunately for them, and for Jae-Joon, the password is Russian for "I can't live without you". Poor Jae-Joon had to find ten billion different ways to tell the Russian woman in front of him how he can't live without her just so he could clarify his password to Chief Won-Seok through his hidden microphone. Su-Ji on the other hand attempted to get into every VIP room in hope of landing herself in the Count’s room. Instead, she finds Jae-Joon's face buried between the Russian woman's breasts. This lands them another visit to the police station for some relationship counselling hah.

The Russians manage to meet Dr. Roh for the first time, and they defibrillate the tracking device planted on him. NIS lose their target but they get new leads. Su-Ji’s team believed Jae-Joon was an enemy accomplice mistaking him for communicating with Dr. Roh behind the pamphlet earlier at the park. Harimao on the other hand also suspects Su-Ji after surveillance at the amusement park found her abandoning a baby carriage and comfortably running off even though she was pregnant. For the first time, Su-Ji and Jae-Joon realised the identity of the other, and both felt betrayed. They met up for dinner bitterly staring daggers at each other. A short conversation leaves Su-Ji storming out only to realize she had forgotten to wiretap him. Jae-Joon also quickly follows suit to wire-tap her, and they awkwardly hug each other. That night, they both retreat in misery breaking my heart.

Harimao makes a move to mob Su-Ji but being the top agent she is, managed to escape. Su-Ji's team on the other hand had kidnapped Jae-Joon's DVD store friend who had borrowed from him the blazer with the wiretap still attached. With her safety in danger, Su-Ji was barred from the mission while Jae-Joon’s boss tried to convince Chief Won-Seok to hand him over to the prosecutors just in the instance he was working with Su-Ji and the Russians. But having already bonded with the clumsy Jae-Joon, the Chief tells their boss that he will take responsibility of Jae-Joon.

A new finding revealed that the identity of the Count was actually a woman who goes by the name, Sonya. Su-Ji, adamant to stay on the mission, also found new leads and decided to go after the mission solo. The next exchange was at Suwon, Jangahn-gu.

Su-Ji gets to the Russians first but gets beaten and tied. After the successful exchange, Sonya attempted to kill her but Su-Ji escaped only to face Jae-Joon pointing a gun at her as he still believed Su-Ji was the enemy. He tells the Russians to hand over the virus or else their colleague dies. The Russians shoot at either one of them because neither is their accomplice. Jae-Joon embraces Su-Ji and blocks all the bullets until he was good for dead. Angry, Su-Ji attacks Sonya with the mallet she had earlier taken from the restaurant. Jae-Joon, merely knocked unconscious, had regained his senses and rushes to assist Su-Ji only ro clumsily have them both stuck and dangling off from a pole while the Russians escape. Frustrated, Su-Ji tells Jae-Joon to stay put. 

Sonya escapes on a horse and Su-Ji mounts a horse of her own to go after her. The Russian man gets on a motorbike while Jae-Joon gets on a really slow pony – although for him it must have felt like he was going at 300kph. While Su-Ji engages Sonya in a sword fight, Jae-Joon screams like a girl dodging bullets from the Russian bodyguard. I love that the men are subsidiary to the women. When Jae-Joon finally gets to Su-Ji, he throws her an antennae from the motorbike and being reminiscent of the past, they fence their way to defeat Sonya. It’s a cute plot but a little bit cheesy. 

Facing defeat, Sonya says she will not go down alone and threatens to break the tube holding the frozen virus. In Russian she yells, “Is that what you want?” which I heard as “…that biatch!”. Sonya unrelentlessly throws the virus, and Jae-Joon jumps to save it and prevent it from releasing a biochemical weapon. Su-Ji beats Sonya down fast and goes to check up on Jae-Joon. 

When he had come to and the virus was still in tact, she demanded his identity. He confessed he's NIS. How adorable is it that she gets angry at him because she had previously told him not to do anything dangerous and just be a teacher  in the countryside. Awh. I like this couple. The kick ass girlfriend eternally protecting her endearing nerd.

While making out, Su-Ji's team arrive on a chopper while Harimao by foot. Seriously, is Harimao underfunded or something? What's with the shabby gangster headquarters and lack of better equipments - and transportation (like that delivery truck of theirs). Meanwhile, the policeman who had earlier been with Jae-Joon manages to make a name for himself too for capturing the evil scientist.

After a time skip, we learn that Su-Ji's boyfriend had actually been the unqualified trainer who took Jae-Joon under his wing. Jae-Joon also fakes being team leader after trying the same test Won-Seok had him do to a rookie agent. She had outdone him while the real team leader, Su-Ji, arrives. Su-Ji possesses the same mannerisms as Won-Seok but that is not to say he was her trainer as I originally suspected but that true team leaders had that sort of mannerism. Su-Ji, from a totally different level to Jae-Joon, beats the living lights of the woman and the movie closes with a gun shot. The credits roll, and we see Su-Ji and Jae-Joon working as partners during a mission. It becomes a bumbling mess when Jae-Joon's all too loving mother calls them up during a car chase. Su-Ji tells her they're busy at Jeju Island. Haha. Some things never seem to change.