Andrew reviews the 2000 film, Joint Security Area.
"You're the bastard that stole my lunch sack. Give me back my sammiches!!!"
In the wake of world headlines concerning the
unprecedented North Korean cyberattack on Sony Pictures in an effort to
ultimately thwart the release of the forthcoming (hopefully) Seth Rogen and
James Franco comedy The Interview, I
immediately thought of Oldboy director
Park Chan-wook’s 2000 military thriller Joint
Security Area. Named by Quentin
Tarantino as one of his twenty favorite films since 1992, the film tells the
story of a fatal shooting incident within the demilitarized zone between North
and South Korea that nearly triggers World War III.
Appearing to be an open and shut case, the
film takes on a Rashomon quality as
conflicting stories and evidence suggest there’s more to the outbreak than
meets the eye. Less of a political action
thriller than a crime scene investigation human drama told through flashback as
Sophie E. Jean digs deep through the varying testimonies leading to the
incident, Joint Security Area is as
much about the ongoing Mexican standoff between North and South Korea as well
as a poignant tale of friends separated by their devotion to their respective
countries.
The first film in South Korea to be shot in the Super
35 widescreen format, Park Chan-wook’s first foray into mainstream cinema broke
box office records in South Korea shows the intensely visual director at an
early stage of his career.Chan-wook’s
trademark visual precision, green tinting ala David Fincher, bird’s eye-view
shots and dynamic camera movement, will be immediately familiar to fans of Oldboy and most recently the director’s
first English language feature Stoker with
Nicole Kidman.Chan-wook’s penchant for
surreal, theatrical transitions can be spotted in key scenes, notably a suicide
attempt in which a South Korean soldier tries to leap to his death through a
glass window.Instead of showing him
simply jumping through the window, the soldier and broken glass are held in
suspended animation as the camera rotates upside down before allowing both to
drop, a cartoonish effect Chan-wook would accelerate further in his Vengeance
trilogy as well as the wacky romantic comedy I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay.
"Stop right there. Hand over your freedom!!!"
Also present is Chan-wook’s
attention to production design, with painstaking effort behind authentically
recreating the demilitarized zone as a detailed film set.Refused permission to shoot within the actual
demilitarized zone, Chan-wook’s production team built one of the largest film
sets ever constructed, costing $800,000 and amassing 26,000 square feet.Watching the film, you wouldn’t know this
isn’t the real thing.Many of the actors
in it, notably South Korean megastars Song Kang-ho (recently in Snowpiercer) and Shin Ha-kyun (Save the Green Planet) as North Korean
soldiers would find themselves in nearly every Park Chan-wook film that
followed Joint Security Area.
That said, as an earlier effort by one of cinema’s
most revered modern masters, Joint
Security Area is not without its shortcomings either. A battle sequence near the end of the film is
nearly sunk by a Korean pop song on the soundtrack, unbecoming of the cool
distance of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance or
Oldboy. For those like myself who were introduced to
Chan-wook’s work through Oldboy, Joint Security Area can be somewhat
underwhelming and nowhere near as emotionally or visually enthralling as the
heights reached by his Vengeance pictures.
Still, for a first time mainstream picture, Joint Security Area is a solid effort with fine acting across the
board and innovative visual compositions indicating the emergence of one of the
world’s greatest film directors. The
commercial success of the film granted Chan-wook the Carte Blanche to make
whatever film he wanted, and thus emerged my personal favorites of his, the
jet-black Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and
the astonishing emotional breakthrough Oldboy. South Korea would eventually produce more
films surrounding the still unresolved conflict, such as Silmido and Tae-Guk-Gi: The
Brotherhood of War, some of which most certainly better Joint Security Area in their own
right. Despite the film’s weaknesses, Joint Security Area is something to be
cherished for those interested in the birth of an eclectic, sophisticated
artist in the process of finding his wings.
