[Big Picture] 'Negotiation' with a high material wall vs 'Ghost' that goes beyond the era and genre

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While the Hollywood blockbuster 'Avatar: Water Road' and the Japanese animation 'The First Slam Dunk' are on a long run, two Korean films are targeting theaters during the Lunar New Year holidays.

These are the movies 'Negotiation' and 'Ghost'.

'Negotiation' is a film depicting the negotiating operation between a diplomat and a local NIS agent who went to Afghanistan to save Koreans who were held hostage by the Taliban in the worst kidnapping case.

Based on the 2007 saemmul church kidnapping case, Hwang Jung-min and Hyun-bin play the lead roles, and director Lim Soon-rye, who directed 'Waikiki Brothers', 'The Whistleblower', and 'Little Forest', took the megaphone.

'Ghost' is a movie depicting the real 'ghost''s unstoppable operation and the desperate struggle of the suspects trapped in a remote hotel to break through suspicion and escape, suspected of being a 'ghost', a spy planted by an anti-Japanese organization in Gyeongseong, the Japanese Government-General of Korea in 1933. .

Lee Ha-nui and Park So-dam star in the lead roles, and director Lee Hae-young, who made 'Cheonghajangna Madonna' and 'Believer', was in charge of directing.

As the Corona 19 pandemic has continued for several years, it has been difficult to find anticipated works for a while in theaters during the Chuseok and Lunar New Year holidays.

During the Lunar New Year holiday in 2023, two heavy genre films featuring top stars are expected to be released at the same time, forming a four-way battle with 'Avatar 2' and 'The First Slam Dunk'.

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Marks The abduction of the Saemmul Church missionary group was an incident that divided public opinion even at the time of the incident.

Of course, the material itself is cinematic.

However, as it is a sensitive material, the perspective of the story and the way it unravels the message seemed close to a challenge.

'Bargaining' focused on the person, not the case, to be precise, the negotiators who saved the hostage, not the hostage.

The build quality isn't bad.

A shocking incident occurs, characters struggling to solve the incident appear, and the charm and performance of top actors are added in a composition in which the incident is dramatically resolved through conflict and crisis.

The film introduces an incident at the beginning.

It was a choice for rapid development and at the same time an opening that suggested the direction of directing.

The film progresses the play while excluding perspectives or perspectives on the controversial real events.

It seems that the director wanted to talk about humanism through the story of the people who struggled for the incident, not the incident itself.

Regardless of the cause and result of the incident, it is emphasized that it is the duty and responsibility of the state to protect its citizens whose lives are at stake, and that the people's lives are more important than the nation's face or money.

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Jae-ho (Hwang Jung-min), an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Dae-shik (Hyun Bin), an agent of the National Intelligence Service, take up arms in negotiating with the Taliban.

Jae-ho, who values ​​principles and principles, and Dae-shik, who has stayed in the country for a long time, put forward experience and tact and conflict over the method of negotiation.

However, in the end, the two of them agree and cooperate on the idea of ​​'saving people'.

The director's good intentions and messages float throughout the film.

This is because it avoids questions that should be addressed.

Although views on it are mixed and controversial, it should not be ruled out.

This is because this process itself can lead to acceptance of various perspectives, interpretations, and understandings of events.

It is difficult to empathize with the victims of the case and the people struggling to solve the case as the film deviated from the core throughout the movie.

The appearance of the hostages maximizes the horror of the situation, but does not lead to sympathy or sympathy for them.

In addition, it is difficult to put emotions into the negotiators' blood, sweat, and desperation.

It is a movie that does not miss attractions such as motorcycle chase scenes and gunfights, but the barriers to entry mentioned above are great for enjoying the pleasure of the genre.

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To put it bluntly, the Foreign Ministry's negotiating strategy was only half-successful.

The keynote set by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of the negotiations collapsed in a series of unexpected crises, and in the end, they made the next best choice, not the best.

The film shows this process with a sense of urgency in the flow of conflict-crisis-resolving, but the hearts of the viewers do not heat up, but instead become cold.

'Negotiation' became an unfinished film that tied a knot without resolving the huge question mark 'Why?' that followed from the beginning to the end.

In fact, no matter what kind of debate this negotiation goes through, it is bound to end in 'nevertheless'.

Even if they turned the pendulum back to that time, their choices would not have been very different.

However, I can't help but feel regretful that this was the best story the movie tried to tell by projecting this incident.

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Director Lee Hae-young, who was recognized for his stylish directing skills through 'Kyungseong School: The Disappeared Girls' in 2015 and 'Believer' in 2018, is working on mystery plays and action films set in the Japanese colonial period. I had a challenge to combine.

The new work 'Ghost' is composed of a complex genre consisting of a mystery play centered on 'finding ghosts' for the first half hour and an action piece depicting the activities of the anti-Japanese organization Black Corps for the second half hour.

Compared to his director's colossal ambitions, the result is distracting and sloppy.

The reasoning element in the first half collapses emptyly as if there was no intention to continue it tight in the first place, and the action in the second half turns the movie into a fantasy for an instant due to the lack of probability and unrealistic design.

The tragedy of the times is consumed only as the background or stage of an action play in this work.

In this movie, Joseon appears as a space that boasts exotic beauty with a mixture of hanok and western-style buildings, hanbok and kimono.

In addition, the confrontation between the oppressive Japan and the resistant independence army is a good mechanism for the catharsis of the action to explode.

The splendid and beautiful art shines throughout the film, but the weak story and poor characters reveal their limits as the play develops.

Did he think that pouring out lines full of tragic beauty would convey the pain of the times to the audience?

There is no depth or resonance felt in the lines full of pretentiousness.

The trivial dialogue between the two actresses about 'cigarettes' is the worst.

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The character design is also below expectations.

The story of Park Cha-gyeong (Lee Ha-nui), who is the daughter of a rich Joseon family, but devotes herself to the independence movement for her convictions, and Junji Itoyama (Sol Kyung-gu), the supervisor of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, who had to overcome a tragic family history because she was born to a Japanese father and a Korean mother, are the charms of the characters. It was a good material to maximize.

Their dilemma had a lot of room to be used cinematically through the layer of directing, but the director simply handled it with one or two episodes or a few lines like eye candy.

Although Park Cha-kyung, played by Lee Ha-nui, and Ahn Kang-ok, played by Park So-dam, stand out for the most part, they leave the impression that most of the actors, including them, are playing characters.

There are too many characters that consume depth and meaning.

The fact that the target is an actor like Seol Kyung-gu and Park Hae-soo is a huge loss even for the movie itself.

The size or weight of the role does not matter.

The two female leads seem to be there for a few scenes, and the rest of the actors walk around throughout the story and leave shabby, failing to create impressive scenes as characters or performances.

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The movie seems to run for the action in the second half of the 30 minutes.

Director Lee Hae-young wants to provide visual pleasure through the two actresses' active play.

However, these scenes that gave the most strength in the entire movie resulted in sending the story to a completely different world without properly setting the genre and use of the times.

Moreover, the action of 'ghost' does not organically combine with the story and character, but seems like an action for action's sake.

Movies can dramatize and transform history and times within the permissible range.

This is the freedom and ability of the director, the creator, and the actor's role is to visualize the director's cinematic imagination through acting.

However, 'Ghost' left only the director's ambition.

(Reporter Kim Ji-hye of SBS Entertainment News)