Hollywood makes lots of legal thrillers, but none of them speak so directly to the Korean American experience as the newly released West 32nd. While in New York for the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Flim Festival, co-writer and director Michael Kang and stars Grace Park and Jun Sung Kim came to The Korea Society for a freewheeling panel discussion on how the film was made and what this unique, Korean American statement means to its creators.

West 32nd is more than a Grisham-esque story of murder and deception among gangsters in New York’s Koreatown, said Kang. It’s a drama about one’s connection to, and separation from, one’s culture. The lead character, John Kim (John Cho), is a pro-bono lawyer assigned to defend a Korean American teenager framed for a gangland murder. With the help of the boy’s sister, Lila Lee (Grace Park), Kim delves deep into Koreatown’s underworld where he’s manipulated by gangster Mike Juhn (Jun Sung Kim). Though Kim is the model of second-generation immigrant success, he can’t speak Korean and as the mystery deepens, despite the fact he’s Korean, he’s increasingly out of his element.

With a predominately Korean American cast, West 32nd’s themes of identity seeped into the production process. The film’s characters alternate between Korean and English dialog, and Kang said that he wanted both languages to sound authentic. Many sections of dialog required extensive re-writing and finding bilingual actors was a major challenge. Once Park and Kim signed onto the project, language was still a problem. Both actors said they had to rehearse their Korean to appear perfectly fluent.

Whatever the travails, they were glad to have done West 32nd. Though both have played many roles in Hollywood and Korea, this was the first project that allowed them to give portray Korean American characters in a multi-dimensional way.