Movie Review: Kim’s Video

3 stars out of 5

In the mid 90s I had an East Village girlfriend, so we spent a decent amount of time at Kim’s Video on St. Mark’s Place looking for something to rent. (It could be a frustrating search, as the movies were snobbily filed by director instead of title.) Post-relationship, Kim’s reamined in my “sad guy haunts record stores” rotation. So, Kim’s holds a memorable spot in my life and I was very interested to learn more about the store and what happened to its massive video collection.

So it’s a shame this isn’t a very good documentary.

It is an OK documentary for basic information, like so many of the unnecessary docs providing content for streaming networks. We meet the mysterious Mr. Kim and learn about his background. We see footage of the wild old downtown NYC of the 1980s. And we take a deep dive into the legitimately compelling story of how Kim’s complete video collection ended up in the small town of Salemi, Italy.

The flaws fall squarely with the directors. (For most of the movie we think there’s one director but we accidentally find out there are two. And they’re married. Awwww!!) The narrator/director really, really wants us to impress us with how much he knows about movies. So there’s a whole lot of, “When I bought that pack of gum, it reminded me of when the wounded infantryman bought a back of gum in Truffaut’s masterwork…”

Also, the situation in Salemi, spanning over a decade, is very complicated and frustrating. In a better director’s hands, with a more dynamic personality — oh let’s say, Michael Moore — this complicated frustration could’ve been greatly simplified and even delivered in a humorous way. These directors are unable to do that.

In general these days, too many journalists and documentarians are becoming characters in their own work. But there has to be a very compelling reason to do that. Here, the narrator/director actually becomes an integral part of the story — no spoilers, but his actions affect the fate of Kim’s video collection. But by becoming involved, he sacrifices his objectively as a documentarian, and for me became an unreliable narrator. (Also, how does he afford to keep flying back and forth from New York to Salemi, and also to Korea??)

The climax — again, no spoilers — is presented in such a way to make the director(s) and their colleagues seem really cool and fun. But by then I was basically rooting for the bad guys.