Edited

What a gleefully macabre noir masquerading as neo-realist drama this is. From Bong Joon-ho, the director of The Host and the astoundingly underrated Memories of Murder, comes a film that manages to both swaggeringly eviscerate expectations by shifting gears every thirty minutes while also remaining so confident and thoroughly quiet about its gusto that it flows like butter. This film is dark and dreary, with a wonderfully droll sense of humor, and it brings new life to detective conventions by casting a middle-aged mother (Hye-Ja played by Kim Hye-Ja) as a detective with a personal stake in the crime. It’s a true pitch-black pleasure. Continue reading →