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(ag.gres.sion.scale):noun: “A psychological test meaning the frequency of overt aggressive behaviours that may result in physical or psychological injury to others.”

The film opens with shocking violence making you sit up and take notice this carries on throughout as there is no holding back in this action thriller. Mob boss Bellavance (Ray Wise) discovers that $500,000 of his money has been stolen so he sends out a gang of hitmen to send a message to the suspected thieves and also retrieve the stolen money. This of course could be harder than first anticipated. Having only recently and rather abruptly moved from the city into a house conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, aren’t they always and without even unpacking the moving boxes before Bellavance’s men turn up invading their home and killing Maggie and Ben in the process. Will they get more than they bargained for when they meet the children of the family rebellious Lauren (Fabianne Therese) and Owen (Ryan Hartwig) a very disturbed individual who has only recently been released from a facility.

These are the two real standout characters of the film two fearless teenagers fighting against a gang of trained hitmen I know who my money’s on! Without knowing where the stolen money is Lauren and Owen are the key and last hope to finding it and they seem to have just escaped out the window. The only hope of finding Bellavances’s money is to find them. This should be easy shouldn’t it, trained hitmen against two teenagers? Owen is a deeply troubled and disturbed teen who has homicidal tendencies and rates rather high on the aggression scale himself. He does however know how to make lethal booby-traps and is about to teach some very painful lessons to the home invaders.

There are comparisons to Home Alone and these cannot be ignored and are rather welcomed but we need to talk about Owen as he is much more Kevin Katchadourianhan than Kevin McCallister there won’t be any paint pots swinging at the bad guys this time but razor blades and guns as Owen has more deadly games in store for them and on a much more disturbing level. You always need to worry about the quiet ones and Owen is as silent and sadistic as they come.

A thoroughly enjoyable film that asks the question how far would you go for money and is it worth dying for?

Petty Romance is a Korean rom-com following comic book artist Jeong-bae, who is capable of great artwork but less capable at coming up with an engaging and coherent story, who is told to hire a writer in order to help him attempt to win a $100,000 comic book prize. After a series of amusingly bizarre interviews he lands on Da-rim, an unsuccessful sex-columnist who is trying to make it as a creative writer who, it ironically transpires, is a completely sexually unexperienced virgin. This is a rom-com, so you can tell off the bat that the conclusion is inevitable, the two will end up together by the end, but what’s quite fun about Petty Romance is how it gets to that point.

Opening to a rather comical, pun intended, sequence where Bae’s 4 year ‘labour of love’ graphic novel is laughed from the publishers office and he is forcibly removed when his reaction is a tad… emotional. Not long after, following the advice of his publisher friend, and his group of artist friends (of varying levels of success) he sets about having someone else write the story that he will visualise. The initial relationship between Bae and Da-rim is strained to say the least, there are some cultural idioms to do with who should be the elder in a conversation that are frankly lost in the translation for me, but a misunderstanding leads Da-rim to believe that Bea fancies her, when in fact he seems initially to despise her – the comedy aspect of ‘rom-com’. As they begin to create a story – in which a sexually provocative female assassin (that looks like Da-rim) battles with a nemisis/sexual partner (that curiously looks like her brother… a fact not really touched upon) – the pair build an oddball relationship, that is enhanced by their own eccentricities.

As we learn more about both characters stories we see why they act as they do, Bea’s backstory involving a famous artist father and his need for money to retrieve a beloved painting and Da-rim’s family situation with her slightly uncaring, womanising brother along with her own sexual experience, help to give motivation to the otherwise slightly unstable characters.

The movie occasionally dips into some surreal animated sequences, often highly sexualised, to parallel the narrative of the story with it’s comic book facsimile, and these sequences help to add a bit of fun and levity… oh and violence, some of the animated segue are fantastically violent and entertaining action sequences. There is quite a lot to find funny in Petty Romance, in the interactions between the two main cast and, later on, even some laughably cringy moments in what has to be one of the most embarrassing attempted ‘sex scenes’ I’ve watched this year, and a slightly slapstick toilet/shower sex scene fiasco. The story moves along at a satisfying enough pace and is never particularly boring during it’s (just shy of) 2 hour length, and this is helped by the fun frivolous acting and amusing dialogue.

The conclusion is perhaps slightly drawn out with some overly dramatic acting choices from the pair, as they confront each other at the comic book awards ceremony, but it ends how you would expect and is no less satisfying for the slightly manic mannerisms and outbursts. Definitely worth a look if you’re a fan of Korean or Asian comedy, especially if you enjoyed My Sassy Girl, but equally enjoyable for anyone just looking for a decent laugh.

Petty Romance is released on October 8.