Directed by Park Chan-wook. Written by Mu-yeong Lee, Hyun-seok Kim, Seong-san Jeong, and Park Chan-wook
Two North Korean soldiers are shot dead and a third injured in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, with a South Korean soldier admitting to doing the shooting. The living witnesses can’t agree on the circumstances, however, with the South Korean alleging he was abducted and the shooting was his heroic escape, while the other side claims it was an unprovoked and dastardly sneak attack.
To break the deadlock, and to avoid an all-out war, a team of Swiss and Swedish investigators are summoned to find out what really happened, but they find it hard to penetrate the decades of built-up animosity, ingrained refusal to acknowledge fault, and fear of losing face. Generals stonewalling, military handlers watching their every step, and key witnesses clamming up – for love of country, or for some other reason?
Park Chan-wook’s Joint Security Area starts out as a military investigation poised to delve into two warring countries’ shared psyche but diverts to instead focus on their shared humanity. Rigid military structures are traded in for much softer targets, but the excitement at the prospect of a taut mystery thriller is stronger than the pathos Park ultimately offers up.
In the middle of this mystery we have Sgt. Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun), maverick South Korean soldier with a few fantastical feats to his name, and Sgt. Oh Kyeong-pil (Song Kang-ho), a North Korean counterpart with an illustrious service record that has even seen him travel abroad. Exemplars of their respective armies, now embroiled in a messy investigation.
Lee and Song deliver a wonderful double act. Sgt. Lee’s a cocky fresh-faced youth admired by others and he possesses a certain maverick attitude towards institutions. Sgt. Oh, perhaps by virtue of his travels, doesn’t have the ideological blinders on that many of his North Korean comrades do, but he’s no naif; he knows to stay within the lines. Lee’s performance jumps out because Sgt. Lee faces a reckoning over the length of Park’s movie, tumbling from his cocksure heights, and Lee crumbles himself up accordingly, but opposite him, Song offers a deep reserve, portraying a man who can see past a uniform but is disciplined enough to never remove his own.
Their work vindicates Joint Security Area stepping away from its initial criminal investigation to instead dwell on the people involved, but Park’s affection for bloody conflict does stain this story that could’ve been a novel and fresh look at how arbitrary divisions belie a common humanity.
Park pursues this theme vigorously with his visual storytelling, where soldiers enforce invisible borders throughout: standing within arm’s reach of each other, but not daring to step on the adjoining pavement piece; squads facing off in a field, each group occupying the edges of the frame, their guns trained on each other while their respective leaders walk up to exchange cigarettes and then depart.
For a movie that for a long time feels like an olive branch, Park and his squad of co-writers ultimately strap a cinder block to Joint Security Area and let it sink into defeatism, reinforcing the mindset of the individuals operating on the front lines. The mental heel turn is understandable, but the sensationalism Park opts for, bloodying his movie with violence when it has largely used its words to tell a story of brothers from different mother(land)s, cheapens it, making it a punk-out shrug instead of the wrenching tragedy it had the potential to be.
Mikkel Frederiksen 