The New York Asian Film Festival ran from June 30 to July 16. For more information about what you missed, click here.
There is no country on the world cinema stage more willing to turn their political and social crises into grand entertainment than South Korea. And while Ordinary Person lacks the crowd pleasing edge of last year’s festival entries Inside Man and A Violent Prosecutor, it still tells a glossy, blistering tale of political corruption that puts American half-measures to shame. What initially seems like yet another study in the poisonous influence of authoritarian masculinity becomes something very different, a meditation of the limits of duty and honor, and a trenchant reminder that it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, corruption will always take the same ugly form.
The year is 1987. Detective Sung-jin (Son Hyun-jo), makes a bad first impression, hopping off a bus and swaggering into the police precinct, smacking pretty much everybody he comes across upside their head and later berating his crippled son for not standing up to bullies. But he quickly reveals a more tender side, doting lovingly after his deaf-mute wife (Ra Mi-ran). He reveals himself to be a man of contradictions, and what unfolds will prove to be a test of which side will win out: the officer or the man?
Through a series of happy accidents combined with some actual decent detective work, Sung-jin and his new rookie of a partner Park Dong-gyu (Ji Seung-hyun), whose seeming guilelessness masks a probing intelligence, manage to capture and beat a confession out of South Korea’s first serial killer, Kim Tae-sung (Jo Dal-Hwan). Sung-jim instantly becomes a national hero. But his old friend Chu (Kim Sang-Ho), a muckraking reporter, has a lead that a cover-up of some kind is in progress, and will do anything to get to the truth, placing Sung-jim in a very dangerous position.
There is a significant shift that takes place in the first act of the movie. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going in, and the opening scenes had a certain tone that I sometimes find troubling in South Korean thrillers, where the casual brutality of the heroes is, if not openly championed, then at least treated with a lighter touch than I’m comfortable with. The sequence early on where Sung-jim and Park chase a crook named Swifty has an almost slapstick edge that, while amusing, seems slightly off, especially when compared to what follows.
But once Chu enters the scene, the film evens out and becomes downright riveting.
As performed by Sang-Ho, Chu is a riveting figure: dynamic, crusty, annoying, righteous, and absolutely single minded in his pursuit of the truth. Though his cause is noble, the way he’s willing to screw over anybody and everybody to get his scoop makes him, at times, exceedingly difficult to root for. But at the same time, it’s easy to see why Sung-jin loves and respects him. More than anything else, their rocky friendship forms the emotional spine of the movie.
Sung-jim is intoxicated by the attention he receives from higher ups at the National Security Planning (NSP) Intelligence Agency, where zealous new operative Gyu-nam (Jang Hyuk) has a very important initiative he’s determined to push through at all costs.
It’s not difficult to tell that Gyu-nam, with his slick suits and smug, icy persona, is the physical embodiment of the rot at the heart of the political machine. A bottomless well of ruthless ambition, he is so determinedly calculating (and calculated) as to seem almost beyond human.
Despite his venal nature, the Chief of the NSP (Jeong Man-sik) bonds with Sung-jin over their shared experience as Vietnam soldiers, a humanizing moment that even adds a little shading to Gyu-nam, as he quietly stews about being excluded. It’s not manipulation; they actually like him, and his oft-repeated story about the shin injury he acquired on his tour of duty. He charms them, and they prove very grateful for his service, in more ways than one.
But always in the background, whispering in his ear, is Chu, trying to warn him exactly who he’s getting into bed with, and chasing a story that threatens everything the NSP has worked for, a move that now threatens Sung-jin as well.
In most other films, the question would be whether Sung-jim will choose between his friendship with Chu and his loyalty to the Powers That Be, who have offered him a seat at the table, and to foot the bill for corrective surgery for his son.
But this isn’t an American film. This is a South Korean film, and theirs is an industry that has absolutely no problem wading into the complexities of political/ethical action. So there’s never a question that Sung-jim will choose the State and its perks over the truth. The question becomes: will the power and alliances he’s accumulated give him the juice he needs to work the system?
It’s the decision Sung-jim makes in this moment, and the consequences thereof, that launch the movie into its second half, where things go deeply insane. Things go very, very badly for Sung-jim in the aftermath of his choice, and now he’ll do anything to make things right, to provide some sense of justice.
But again… this is a South Korean film.
Sometimes, in a South Korean movie, mere survival is the happiest ending you can hope for.
Ordinary Person wears its politics on its sleeve, being defiantly against corruption while thoroughly understanding how and why it happens, and how tempting it could be to even the most well-intentioned soul. The men in charge aren’t good people, but they are people, worn down by compromise and the lure of easy money and insulation from the trickle down effects their actions have on the citizens they’re supposed to be watching over.
Speaking as a great big dumb-assed American, it never ceases to amaze me how direct and uncompromising South Korea can be when it comes to confronting those issues head on. The movie gets rather pulpy in its second half, and the optimism (‘happiness’ would be way too strong a word) only barely works, due at least partially to its being based on historical fact. But the journey to that ending is nothing short of spectacular.
