New on Blu: Korean Film THE SUSPECT Delivers Big Hollywood Action

The Suspect releases July 22 from Well Go USA.

Like many South Korean thrillers which deal with North Korean espionage themes (and it seems most of them do), The Suspect assumes that the viewer is familiar with the politics and current events regarding the relationship between North and South which inform every part of Korean culture and media. As a point of fact, the film came out a few weeks after Commitment, a very similar (but ultimately inferior) film about a defected North Korean agent. Personally, I had to restart The Suspect about a half hour in because I was confused by what exactly was going on. The film hits the ground running and several characters and plot points are introduced without much exposition. I ultimately really enjoyed the film so for this reason, I’m approaching this not only as a review but also to provide enough of a synopsis that readers won’t run into the same problem I did with the dense first act.

Ji Dong-chul is a former North Korean special forces agent who has defected to the South. Originally trained in an intensely grueling Ryonggang training camp with a 3% graduation rate, he was one of their top spies before the government cut him off and put a hit on his family. Dong-chul knows the agent who carried out the hit, and has sworn revenge for the deaths of his wife and daughter. It’s become his obsession. Now living in the South, his history a matter of public knowledge, he works as a chauffeur while dodging interview requests from a snoopy documentary filmmaker who wants to tell his story.

The plot kicks off when he interrupts the murder of an important government official, which results in him getting a last request from the dying man, and getting framed for the crime. Turns out that the NSIA (a fictionalized agency based on the NIS, as far as I can tell) is actually behind the op, and they are after the pair of eyeglasses that the old man has handed to Dong-chul.

At the NSIA, a rough-edged sergeant named Min Se-hoon (who once tangled with Dong-sul when the latter was still a North Korean spy) is brought in to lead the hunt. He’s the Tommy Lee Jones; the Sam Gerard. Every bit as compelling and watchable as the protagonist, and you get the sense that these guys are really on the same team but don’t realize it. We’re just waiting to see what happens when he figures out he’s playing for the bad guys.

The rest of the film is a sustained high stakes chase, both on foot and vehicular, and it shines. It’s action heavy from here out and includes both brutal hand-to-hand fights and amazing car sequences that find our protagonists barreling down tight alleys and a long flight of steps in reverse, and using a police car as a battering ram to open up a roadblock. In another great moment, two cars in a narrow street race toward each other at top speed in a game of chicken, neither giving an inch.

The film is a unique among Korean movies that I’ve seen. It’s definitely a take on the kind of Bruckheimer-esque mega-action thriller that generally only comes out of the US. The story is standard Korea but the filmmaking is pure Hollywood: Besides the hunter/hunted dynamic of The Fugitive and US Marshals, there are lots of flashes of Paul Greengrass (kinetic combat and insane car chases), Christopher Nolan (framing of “big” shots and bold music that recalls Hans Zimmer’s Dark Knight scores), and Michael Bay (aerial helicopter style footage, sweeping rotational shots). Unfortunately at times we also get some of that blue/yellow color timing, but overall it’s a great appropriation of Hollywood style.

Despite having kind of a rough start, this was an awesome movie once it got going, and should absolutely be on the radar of any any fan of action or Asian films.

THE PACKAGE

The Supect is chased onto Blu-Ray by Well Go USA. The disc includes Korean audio and English subtitles (no English dubs). My copy came with a slipcase with artwork cover identical to the cover.