Oldboy director Park Chan-wook has garnered somewhat of a bloody international reputation since his Grand Prix win at Cannes for the stylish film in 2004 and the subsequent widespread interest for the first and third films in his revenge trilogy: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. However, his first feature, Joint Security Area, is less about the revenge and more about the friendship, telling a straightforward, commercial mystery story that went on to sell an absurd amount of tickets and briefly hold the honor of highest grossing film in Korean history. It was this little bit of work that gave Park the budgets for his later films.
However, don’t let the words ‘commercial’ and ‘friendship’ send you running for the hills because this film is hardly your touchy-feely, let’s-all-be-friends drama that ends with North and South Korea kissing and making up. It plays like a real snippet from the lives of soldiers caught up in something they can’t control and captures every bit of the warmth, sorrow and anxiety of the situation.
The pic takes place at the Joint Security Area, (the sensitive demilitarized border between North and South Korea) beginning with the discovery of two murdered North Korean soldiers on their side of the line. A South Korean soldier confesses to the killings, claiming to have acted in self-defense after being kidnapped by the North Koreans, while the sole North Korean survivor of the incident claims it was a completely unprovoked attack. In the middle of this is a Swiss Neutral Nations officer brought in to investigate the case and bring about a resolution before the growing hostility on both sides explodes.
But it’s impossible to care about the dull officer, whose plot feels more like hefty filler than anything to really concern us. She does, however, serve as a framing story that leads to JSA’s merits: strong writing in its flashback scenes and charming, empathetic characters.
Through the flashbacks, it soon becomes apparent that the conflict arose out of a forbidden act of friendship between two North and two South Korean soldiers, who were forced to resort to clandestine midnight meetings. Fun dialogue and simple bonding moments put the emphasis on the characters and leave us to decipher the intricate aspects of the four soldiers’ relationships while the fated murders ominously approach.
The soldiers’ appeal and agreeability are also the result of strong performances from a big name cast (before they got big) of Park Chan-wook favorites. The actors all compliment each other well with eccentric qualities from Kim Tae-woo’s stressful nervousness to Song Kang-ho’s balanced composure. It is impossible not to smile in those daytime scenes where these characters, well established to us as friends, sternly stand guard on their side of the border, stare the other one down and spit across the line as a prank.
Without getting preachy and by simply having faith in its characters, Joint Security Area is a nice introduction to Park Chan-wook, a political thriller for people who don’t like political thrillers, and required viewing for Korean cinema.
Of course, you can simply wait for the Hollywood remake that (I kid you not) somehow transposes the story to the US-Mexico border. Because of course, as an American viewer, I can only appreciate a story set in my country and not in the far away alien land of Korea. That was the lesson of Joint Security Area, right?
Reviewed by Tarun
