With South Korea emerging as one of the strongest sources of great thriller/action cinema, Confession of Murder certainly wasn't born into easy water. While Director Jeong Byeonggil delivered on gritty action sequences, the movie as a whole fell short from measuring up to its industry-setting predecessors.
To be fair, the story structure wasn't half bad. Everything was accessible and easily entertaining. However, the problem lies in the plot draped over the structure. The whole story was pivoted on ideas and themes that have been honed in once and again by the genre—statue of limitations, family relationships, revenge, that innocent lover, foul-mouthed detectives seeking redemption—and all of them tie together in a rather unoriginal manner. Enough hints were dropped by the first half of the movie for the second half to be a yawn. Of the few twists in the movie, most were fairly interesting, some spotted coming from fifty miles away, but none enough to salvage the movie from what is basically a remix of a remix of staple K-thriller tropes. Not to mention, the ending was anticlimactic to the fiercely dark tone the movie had developed and the script a hodgepodge of trite lines/scenes that multiplied through the runtime.
Jung Jaeyoung's performance was fair—given, it isn't an easy task playing a 2D character that has probably shown up in every other mainstream thriller—and Park Sihoo demonstrates that he's still got a long way to go.
One saving grace from all of this mediocrity is the action sequences. There were a couple scenes which had been especially creative. Though at some points they suffered from lengthiness, overall they were highly entertaining and it was a pleasure seeing some practical martial arts mixed into the choreography.
In no way will Confession of Murder be a milestone in Korean thriller, and it clearly wasn't intended to be all that original, but at least it had met the ruined cars quota for it to be a decent action flick.
And by the way, Jeong Byeonggil, your tribute to Park Chanwook has been duly noted.
To be fair, the story structure wasn't half bad. Everything was accessible and easily entertaining. However, the problem lies in the plot draped over the structure. The whole story was pivoted on ideas and themes that have been honed in once and again by the genre—statue of limitations, family relationships, revenge, that innocent lover, foul-mouthed detectives seeking redemption—and all of them tie together in a rather unoriginal manner. Enough hints were dropped by the first half of the movie for the second half to be a yawn. Of the few twists in the movie, most were fairly interesting, some spotted coming from fifty miles away, but none enough to salvage the movie from what is basically a remix of a remix of staple K-thriller tropes. Not to mention, the ending was anticlimactic to the fiercely dark tone the movie had developed and the script a hodgepodge of trite lines/scenes that multiplied through the runtime.
Jung Jaeyoung's performance was fair—given, it isn't an easy task playing a 2D character that has probably shown up in every other mainstream thriller—and Park Sihoo demonstrates that he's still got a long way to go.
One saving grace from all of this mediocrity is the action sequences. There were a couple scenes which had been especially creative. Though at some points they suffered from lengthiness, overall they were highly entertaining and it was a pleasure seeing some practical martial arts mixed into the choreography.
In no way will Confession of Murder be a milestone in Korean thriller, and it clearly wasn't intended to be all that original, but at least it had met the ruined cars quota for it to be a decent action flick.
And by the way, Jeong Byeonggil, your tribute to Park Chanwook has been duly noted.