Directed by: Park Sang-hyun Starring: Shin Hye-sun, Bae Jeong-ok, Huh Joon-ho, Hong Gyeong, Tae Hang-ho Release Date: June 10th, 2020
Innocence is a well-crafted courtroom drama film with some great twists and turns and a knockout performance from lead actress Shin Hye-seon. If Heart Blackened (2017), Moss (2010), or Mother (2009) are Korean films you’ve enjoyed, then Innocence will be right up your alley. And despite a few conveniently placed clues to help the lead character solve the film’s main puzzle, first-time writer/director Park Sang-hyun delivers the goods with his dark tale of secrets, greed, justice, and reconciliation.
A small town funeral erupts in chaos one afternoon leaving one person dead and four others hospitalized. When officials discover that the villagers had been served poisoned rice wine, the wife of the deceased, Hwa-ja (Bae Jong-ok), who appears to be showing signs of dementia, becomes the lead suspect and is taken into custody. Meanwhile, her estranged daughter Jeong-in (Shin Hae-son), working as a lawyer at a big city law firm, sees her mother accused of murder on the news and rushes to pick up the case and defend her in court.
With Hwa-ja’s condition worsening, she not only has no recollection of the crime in question, but she fails to even recognize Jeong-in as her own daughter. Matters worsen when the village Mayor (Huh Jun-ho), who was also one of the victims of the funeral poisoning, begins to use his extensive powers to assist in Hwa-ja’s prosecution. Determined to prove her mother’s innocence, Jeong-in must piece together a dark mystery of long held secrets buried deep within the countryside village.
Now some of the evidence does indeed fall into Jeong-in’s hands a bit too conveniently while she investigates largely on her own, but that’s sort of the nature of these crime mystery movies. The lawyer typically singlehandedly takes on that detective role and finds out what everyone else couldn’t (or wouldn’t). And with the puzzle destined to complete itself, the order in which the pieces drop can be kind of random but it’s these unexpected moments that make for some great story surprises in Innocence.
There is also a great cast of characters in Innocence. Shin Hye-sun (A Day) leads the pack with a real breakout performance in her first leading film role. At first I was not convinced with her in the role as she seemed a bit too frail and mild-mannered as Jeong-in, an ambitious career lawyer willing to put herself in harms way at almost every turn. But Shin quickly won me over after the various dimensions of her character became visible and a hidden strength emerged. This great performance on top of the character being written so well turns out to be a great role for Shin, so I expect to see more of her in dramatic roles in the future.
I love how each of the supporting characters also add their own unique flavor to the overall package that is Innocence. While some are fragile and confused, others are powerful and analytical. And whether it was with actor Hong Gyeong as Jeong-in’s autistic younger brother with his “slap me once I slap you twice” philosophy he adopted from his mother, or Tae Hang-ho as the overweight village police officer reigniting his childhood crush on Jeong-in as he personally assists her with investigative matters, there’s a playful humor that is both odd and perfect at the same time as it balances out the more serious and tragic nature of the story.
Innocence was advertised to be a new genre called “Innocent Prosecution Tragedy,” but after the widely publicized stories of wrongful convictions with successful true crime documentaries like “The Innocent Files,” “Kalief Browder,” or even “Making a Murderer,” one might question just how much new of a genre Innocence actually is. But what the film does do exceptionally well like so many other good courtroom dramas is that it keeps you engaged with that feeling like your’e taking part in evidence discovery in real time and that the case could break in either direction at a moment’s notice. There’s always just enough left in the dark that the truth consistently feels like a slowly unfolding puzzle box.
And on a purely filmmaking note, the craftsmanship on display in Innocence is of a very high order. It makes me wonder if the filmmakers were able to spend some extra time with it in the editing room to polish it up so nicely after all the months of delaying the release date due to COVID-19. Because everything from the sound design, visuals and editing went above and beyond what we normally get in films like this. Overall, Innocence has a lot of cards up its sleeve story-wise, so in conjunction with some fine performances and its technical merits, Innocence makes for a highly enjoyable trip to the cinemas.
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