Before making waves around the world with Sympathy For Mr Vengeance and Old Boy director Chan Wook Park had already scored a major international hit with JSA, the film that earned him the freedom needed to make his revenge opuses (opi?) while also entrenching lead actor Lee Byung Hun – currently on view in A Bittersweet Life – as a massive star throughout all of Asia. A significant change of pace from his smaller, darker, edgier revenge pictures JSA is a glossy, more mainstream picture that uses a military investigation into a mysterious killing to dig deeper into the absurdity of war in general and the separation of Korea in particular. A more conventional film JSA may be but a fluffy popcorn flick it is not, there’s still plenty of meat to dig into here.
Set in the demilitarized neutral buffer zone between the two Koreas – the Joint Security Area of the title – JSA begins with a young Swiss-born half Korean woman being called to the JSA to investigate a double killing on the Northern side of the border carried out by a Southern officer played by Lee Byung Hun. The south says he was kidnapped and fought his way to freedom while the North insists he was an unprovoked aggressor who broke into the Northern guard house without warning or provocation and began firing away. Either way the fragile peace between North and South is threatened but the investigator quickly realizes that there are enormous holes in both stories. Clearly something else has happened here, but what and why are both sides covering it up?
JSA holds a few different cards in its hand. It is at times a taught thriller, an investigative procedural, a military action piece and a relationship drama. Park takes these various threads and weaves them into a rich whole, a picture ripe with social commentary that he populates with an engaging cast of interesting characters and shoots with the vividness and style that we’ve come to expect. Because the film is set in such an obvious, real world environment – one that would be hugely recognizable to his primary audience – Park reins in the signature design quirks that abound in Old Boy, Cut and – from what we’ve seen in the footage released so far – Sympathy for Mrs Vengeance in favor of a far more realistic style but the camera movements, editing and sudden outbursts of violence are all clearly the work of the same man. Eventually playing out as a tragedy on the largest scale the film also shows a surprising fondness towards its characters. While later Park films are marked by a certain cold heartedness – with events set in motion either by sheer desperation and foolishness or single minded bloodthirsty revenge – there is none of that here. The characters of JSA are all good people caught up by forces entirely beyond their control. Park clearly loves all of these people and adamantly refuses to take sides in the North versus South debate, arguing only that both sides are fundamentally the same and that life would be an awful lot better if everyone involved would simply acknowledge it.
Leaving alone the cover art – much discussed in these parts – Palm’s upcoming DVD release of the film is solid, though not without its quirks. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen and while the transfer itself is solid enough the print used as a source does carry some dirt and, in one very noticeable instance, some scratching. I would need to pick up some other versions of the film to be certain of this but I believe that they have ported over the previous Hong Kong release rather than doing a new transfer themselves. The other visual issue of note is the blurring of genital nudity in the morgue sequence, something that would have been inserted to comply with Korea’s anti-nudity laws on the original issue and is left intact here. The audio options include an English dub in both 5.1 and 2.0 varieties and the original Korean audio track in 2.0 only. The dub is an interesting beast in itself … they’ve not only dubbed the Korean speech into English, but they’ve also re-dubbed the extensive English dialogue sequences, giving everyone a bland sameness to their voices rather than leaving the original Swiss and Swedish accents intact. The English parts are left intact in the Korean 2.0 track. The subtitles are, as expected, flawless and easy to read. Very surprising, however, are a pair of obvious spelling / grammar errors in the opening text inserted to explain and contextualize the film’s setting. Also included on the DVD package are a series of extras including a music video, behind the scenes footage and cast and crew interviews, all interesting but not particularly exceptional.
While Old Boy still clearly stands as Park’s masterwork JSA is certainly not far behind. An important film and, more importantly, a solidly entertaining one that also happens to have something to say JSA is a film that deserves far greater attention than it has received on these shores to date. While the DVD release is not flawless – if nothing else I’d love a 5.1 or DTS version of the original audio – it is certainly serviceable and worth a look.