“The Classified File” is based on a true story about a detective who will stop at nothing to find a missing girl, even to seek aid from a fortune teller. The director, Kwak Kyung Taek was the director of “Friend,” a popular movie that came out in the early 2000s to much acclaim.
The movie starts off in great Kwak Kyung Taek fashion as the camera snakes through a neighborhood following several characters while showing us the blue collar workers of Busan as a demonstration is going on. It’s riveting and almost Martin Scorsese-esque the way we are introduced to our characters and also 1970s Busan. Interesting enough, Busan is like Boston for Korean cinema. Both areas are known for a thick accent, and both are known for a more rugged and confrontational populace. It seems in both America and Korea, a lot of crime dramas are held in those cities, too. In my opinion, this is why movies set in Boston or Busan are always so fascinating, but I digress.
Although I didn’t love this movie, the acting is really what sets it apart from the box office movies now in Korea. Our two leads played by Kim Yun Seok and Yoo Hae Jin are fantastic. Throughout the movie, they showed such great acting range as they have to go through the politics in order to solve the case. Kim Yun Seok, who plays a detective, especially does a great job in showing his subtly, his frustrations, but also his passion to solve the kidnapping, and there was a great scene in which I thought the actor should be awarded for the Blue Dragon Award or the Grand Bell Award (Korean’s equivalent to the Oscars). Yoo Hae Jin, who plays a fortune teller, is also great in the movie, but his character wasn’t as fleshed out as Kim Yun Seok’s character. Where we know the family struggles that Kim Yun Seok has to face, we only get snippets of Lee Hae Jin’s character’s family life. Also, being a fortune teller, this is where the movie lost me a bit. I don’t believe in fortune tellings but some Koreans do, and in this movie the director never addresses the legitimacy of the profession. There was one scene in particular where I got completely taken out from the movie. I will admit that if you are a believer it might not bother you, but I think the scene and the character could have been handled a lot better.
I really admire the attempt showing the politics of police work in Korea and also the depth of the characters the director showed. However, the movie wasn’t paced very well and when the characters were tense, I felt no suspense at all except for one scene. A good chunk of the movie also felt like montage after montage, and it gave away from the weight of the case. The director has stated in an interview that because this was based on a true story he wanted to focus on the characters and not the police work itself, but I think he did a disservice to the story by assuming all the audience members knew what happened. Even though the case itself can be read all over the internet, he could have still directed it in a way where we felt uncertainty like the characters. It was like he went, “Well you know what will happen so lets speed pass some of these moments.” Both “Zodaic” and “Memories of Murder” are great examples of movies based on real crime stories and had a lot of character development, but even if you knew those cases, it was directed in a way where it was constantly unfolding.
Because of those problems I had, I didn’t really like the movie much after I came out of the theater, but after thinking about it for a day, the director does do a good job in showing Busan in the 1970s and the characters’ struggle. What’s more impressive in this movie though is the acting. If anything else, go watch this movie to see two great actors really being committed in a film. I’ll give it a 3.5/5. If you can, I’d definitely try to rent it before buying it.
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