Directed by: Choi Kook-hee (최국회)
Starring: Kim Hye-soo (김혜수), Yoo Ah-in (유아인), Heo Joon-ho (허준호), Jo Woo-jin (조우진), Vincent Cassel
Review: Default or The Day The Nation Went Bankrupt (Korean literal title) dramatizes the true events surrounding Korea’s eventual realization that it was headed for bankruptcy in 1997 despite strong belief in both private and public sectors that the country’s booming economy was holding strong.
What separates Default from being just an informative or dramatic reenactment that you’d might find on The History Channel is its carefully constructed cross section of society approach to telling its story of winners and losers. In the uppermost layer of the film’s story we meet Han Si-hyun (Kim Hye-soo) who works as the Monetary Policy Team Leader for the Bank of Korea and is among the first to figure out that an economic crisis is imminent, and so she puts together a crisis management team to come up with countermeasures to avoid if not at least reduce the devastating effects that Korea defaulting on its international loans would entail. Also within this top layer we get to see decisions being made at the some of the highest levels of government where some fight to advance their own self-interests and others fight for the people whom they represent.
The middle layer of Default centers around the character Yoon Jeong-hak (Yoo Ah-in), a savvy young man of finance who quits his promising job at an investment firm after privately crunching the numbers long enough to confidently predict an imminent nationwide economic crisis. But Jeong-hak plans to use his knowledge of the system to actually benefit from the impending chaos by betting against the economy with fellow opportunist investors who jump at the chance to profit during the economic fallout. In a lot of ways this character Jeong-hak and his recruited backers remind me of the 2015 American film The Big Short and the trio of opportunists that teamed up to take advantage of the economic collapse in America in the wake of the housing market debacle of ’08.
But perhaps the most consequential story lies at the bottom layer of Default, where an average and honest blue-collar worker named Kab-su (Heo Joon-ho) puts down a huge deposit when he signs the business contract of his life to secure a potentially lucrative supply chain deal with a large department store. The character of Kab-su represents a very large percentage of the population whose faith was with the booming economy at the time and ended up being hit the hardest by the market crash.
Default is one of those movies whose strengths actually mirror its own weaknesses. For instance, the film’s decision to intercut between the three largely unconnected narratives was great for showing that cross section of society that was impacted so differently and was a great way to encapsulate the enormity of the situation along with the economic consequences of the instability. But this also very much makes for three smaller films in a sense and despite some crafty writing to try and tie the stories together, the fact remains that the three leads actors have to share the less than two hour screen time to cover each story arch which thins out the character development quite a bit. The filmmaker Alejandro Inniritu Gonzalez was able to do this very effectively in his films Amores Perros (2000) and Babel (2006) but these films clocked in somewhere around the 2 hour and 30 minute runtime territory.
The biggest highlights in Default come from its outstanding performances by its lead actors. Yoo Ah-in tends to steal the show in his scenes as the smug opportunist investor, but gets pushed to the side for Kim Hye-soo’s powerful confrontation with the IMF President (played very competently by Vincent Cassel) during the film’s climax bailout negotiations. Even while speaking in English during these scenes, Kim Hye-soo really knocks it out of the park as she fights for getting Korea the best possible deal in the face of a potentially unfavorable deal that actually caters more towards foreign (particularly American) interests. And then we have actor Heo Joon-ho playing the factory worker who pulls out an emotionally heavy performance that is very impactful during the film’s third act.
However, with Default being based on the true story of a country in dire financial crisis, the entertainment value is going to vary from person to person depending on individual taste. There is of course drama and tensions do arise between various officials on occasion but the film is mostly very fact heavy and plays out the week long crisis management fairly straight and to the point. Also, Default seems to emphasize only the drawbacks of the IMF deal in relation to how they will negatively affect Korea. I’m not a history or finance expert by any means but the film really makes Korea out to be a pretty big victim here without giving much in the way of what got them in such dire straits to begin with. This could however be the most accurate reading of the situation but my gut tells me that there’s a lot more to the story that Default would rather leave out.
And while there are shreds of comedy to be found in Yoo Ah-in’s segments of the story largely coming from some of the different character eccentricities, the tone is overall much more serious than when compared to a film like The Big Short which brilliantly used humor to enliven the mood during the “boring” explanations of the more complex financial jargon. But Default does also deserve credit for making this potentially complex subject matter very accessible and mostly entertaining.
My biggest gripe with this film is more of a technical nature and also more likely a matter of personal taste. But I for one did not like the choice to employ the unstable handheld camera technique that is largely used during high level discussions in Default where characters are either seated or standing in place for extended periods of time. My guess is that this was done to make the character interactions appear more dynamic and frenetic but it comes off as unnecessarily distracting. Almost feeling as if it was done in post production, the micro camera adjustments are very precise and almost predictable in a similar way with the old pan & scan technique we would get on 4:3 television broadcasts of movies if you’re old enough to remember those days. On top of this, and again a stylistic choice, I didn’t love the colors chosen to give the film its late 90’s vibe. There are a lot of greys, greens and oranges that tint the picture which make film look a little flat and dull at times.
Overall, one can probably already guess who the winners and losers are in Default just by reading a brief synopsis but I don’t think the film is looking to surprise anyone in this department. Default seems to be going for a more general message overall, especially when it gets into the heated final negotiations with the IMF President as a bailout deal is eventually sought out. That message would indeed be one of corruption based in greed at some of the highest levels that have lasting negative effects on the nation as a whole. It’s a very common theme in Korean cinema and its fairly easy to see why with the amount of different real life scandals that have shook the country over the past few decades. It’s almost crazy to think how many different crisis’s the country has faced over the past 50-60 years that its amazing how the country at least outwardly appears to look so strong and healthy today. But Default is not just another film attempting to give us a glimpse into a tumultuous point in history; it also serves as a warning sign for our future which helps the film pack a much heavier and more relevant punch by its finale.
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