‘Gook’ a fresh perspective on 1992’s King riots

‘Gook” opens with an arresting black-and-white image: an 11-year-old girl dancing with abandon in slow motion in front of a fiery blaze. It looks ominous — a Los Angeles house on fire with no one else around — but the girl delights in the scene, moving as wildly as the flames.

The fire hints at larger infernos to come. The story takes place on April 29, 1992, the day the Rodney King verdict prompted riots across L.A. But this isn’t a ground-level look at the destruction. Rather, writer-director Justin Chon makes the inspired choice to shift the action to Paramount, Calif. It’s a few miles from where the worst violence and looting occurred, but still close enough to be burdened by the same racial tensions that were reaching a breaking point across the region and beyond.

Chon, an actor who appeared in the “Twilight” saga, plays Eli, a young Korean-American who runs his late father’s discount shoe store. The dilapidated shop sits on a shabby block in a mostly black and Latino neighborhood, and Eli is understandably stressed about making ends meet.

His brother Daniel (a delightful David So, in his big-screen debut) helps out — though not much. Secretly, he doesn’t care about the shop. He’d rather be an R&B singer.

The third fixture at the store is the girl we saw dancing in the first scene. As an unpaid hanger-on, the vivacious Kamilla (Simone Baker) sticks out because, like most of the customers, she’s black. In lieu of class, she hangs out with Eli and Daniel, retrieving merchandise and running errands, much to the chagrin of her guardians, an older sister and her brother Keith (Curtiss Cook Jr.), who has a particular distaste for the two men, even jumping Daniel at one point, beating him up and stealing his shoes.

Kamilla is the only person capable of putting a smile on Eli’s face, and he treats her like family. He’s hard on her when, for example, she steals a Twinkie from the liquor store across the street, whose owner is played by Chon’s father. But Eli also spoils Kamilla and answers some of her curious questions. After they find his car vandalized with racist graffiti, she asks about the four-letter slur that lends the film its title: What is that? It just means country in Korean, he assures her.

Despite strong performances, the movie falters at times with establishing its genre. It pays playful homage to another 1990s-era store-set movie, “Clerks,” while also containing troubling scenes of Kamilla enduring verbal and physical abuse. There’s a silly dance interlude but also an explicit reference to the Korean store owner who fatally shot 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in 1991.

The uneven tone especially undermines the ending — one that’s as tragic as it is predictable. Viewers may expect — even crave — to feel an emotional impact, but the movie hasn’t laid the groundwork.

Chon’s tale is, nevertheless, praiseworthy for its take on infamous events from a fresh perspective. It also reminds us that, decades later, the racial tensions surrounding the L.A. riots are as relevant as ever.