Directed by: Lee Jeong-seok (이종석)
Starring: Son Ye-jin (손예진), Hyun Bin (현빈), Kim Sang-ho (김상호),
The Film: Crisis Negotiator Ha Chae-yoon (Son Ye-jin), the best in her field and known to never lose her cool no matter what the situation, becomes engulfed in shock after an emergency situation in the field ends with both the hostage and hostage taker being killed. 10 days later, Min Tae-gu (Hyun Bin), an arms smuggler for an international organized crime syndicate, takes Korean police officers and reporters hostage in Thailand and targets Ha Chae-yoon for negotiations. Taken without reason, purpose, or conditions, Negotiator Ha Chae-yoon can’t back down even an inch if she is to stop Min Tae-gu and minimize harm. With just 12 hours remaining, Chae-yoon is faced with the biggest negotiation of her life as she races to bring an end to the hostage crisis.
Son Ye-jin (The Classic, 2003; The Last Princess, 2016) plays Ha Chae-yoon, a renowned crisis negotiator known for staying cool no matter how desperate the situation gets. The Negotiation begins as she’s called in to an active hostage situation on the brink of total collapse. Arriving flustered after coming from a blind date cut short, she whips herself into action and takes her shot at a last minute negotiation. But things go bad very quickly and a lot of people start dying including the hostages. Chae-yoon is left in complete shock from seeing everyone die in front of her so now she’s ready to turn in her badge and give it all up…but just 10 days later, she’s summoned by the highest authority in the land for a negotiation unlike any she’s ever experienced.
Now obviously from the trailer we know that Hyun Bin (Confidential Assignment, 2017) plays the hostage taker in The Negotiation. He’s a dashing international arms smuggler named Min Tae-gu who works for various organized crime syndicates. He is quickly acquainted with Chae-yoon (Son Ye-jin’s character) via webcam in a top secret situation room where the negotiation for the release of several Korean hostages begins. The big mystery beneath all of this surrounds Min Tae-gu’s demands and motives for the hostage taking and why he specifically requested to deal through Chae-yoon, facts that are not revealed upfront and come to light slowly as the film progresses.
This movie is propelled by its super popular leads, Son Ye-jin and Hyun Bin. Son Ye-jin has a larger and more impressive body of work under her when it comes to film roles up the this point in time, but pairing the two together is one of those golden opportunities for the studios to appeal to a massive audience based on the name-power of the leads alone. As for their on-screen chemistry, it’s hard to say what really could have been since they spend nearly the entire film in separate locations and interacting solely through a back and forth exchange via webcam.
And unfortunately, this whole negotiation via webcam tactic simply does not play out as well on screen as the filmmakers might have thought it would. For a lot of the back and forth that takes place, the proximity to danger just never becomes front and center like it needs to be for the stakes to feel as high as The Negotiation wants us to believe they are. The tense moments that do work fairly well are very routine ones as hostage lives are threatened as the time limits set by hostage taker Min Tae-gu begin to expire.
The main characters, Chae-yoon the negotiator and Tae-gu the hostage taker, are quite the mess in regards to both their writing and casting. The problem with these characters is that they feel too much like rough drafts of characters that were never fleshed out on the page. Chae-yoon for example, is supposed to be this amazing crisis negotiator but never actually comes across as being highly skilled or particularly suited for negotiation work. Not only after her first failure in the field, albeit catastrophic, decides that the job just doesn’t suit her and decides to quit…and while being completely devastated (arguably traumatized), she suddenly manages to sleep it off and get back into action after being summoned to an ever-so-important job without description. The character is written to be so frail and sympathetic that even someone with her supposed level of expertise would seemingly have to be highly susceptible to manipulation and emotional fatigue, everything that someone performing high level negotiation work would be expected to be resilient of. Son Ye-jin was also quite underused for her talents in this role, as there was really only one memorable scene that she was able to showcase a glimpse of what she’s capable of talent wise.
Hyun Bin as the hostage taker is portrayed to be almost too ridiculously cool and badass in nearly every shot he’s in while playing the hardhearted ruthless sociopath criminal Min Tae-gu. But The Negotiation just plays way too much to his most marketable characteristics and doesn’t make any effort to mold him to fit the role well at all either. I won’t spoil anything but his character does have some surprises later on in the film as for where they take his character by adding different levels of motivational and emotional forces behind his actions, which is actually part of the fun The Negotiation is hoping to give viewers as it slowly reveals his demands and motives for the hostage taking. But his whole character arch is so poorly realized that the end result just does not square up, leaving viewers unattached as his character is nearly impossible to either like or dislike. The only character whose performance really matches their written role is Son Ye Jin’s main negotiation team partner played by Kim Sang-ho (Yakiniku Dragon, 2018; The Witness, 2018) whose scenes were by far and away the most enjoyable ones in the film for this reviewer.
The musical score chosen for The Negotiation does no favors in helping to elevate tensions nor does it carry the audience through its dull attempts to humanize the film’s antagonist during its later half. It’s full of familiar sounding generic loops that would make sense for an indie feature or afternoon TV drama, but comes off as borderline unacceptable for a major motion picture. With a film that’s already teetering on the edge of collapse with its weakly written and poorly realized characters, this is a score that highlights rather than masks many of the apparent flaws in The Negotiation.
The Negotiation is simply too commercial for its own good, relying ever so heavily on the name power of its leads to carry the film. It’s one of those movies that feels as if everyone involved was given a manual on how to make a movie, followed it to a T, but left out the all-important passion, creativity and artistry that goes along with making a solid product, leaving audiences with a hollow shell of a movie that could have been.
To make matters worse, nothing feels researched and the characters display only the most basic set of skills for their respective professions, depriving them of any sense of expertise and professionalism and rather blows a large hole through any desired sense of believability. The star power alone of The Negotiation might be enough to make a few bucks for a handful of studio executives and investors as it makes its way into a large number of international territories, but it’s the misalignment of its casting, generic writing and uninspired film score that make The Negotiation one of the most forgettable movies of the year. SCORE: 4/10
If you enjoy this content and would like to support our ability to continue to update and increase the quality of our content.
