It is virtually impossible to discuss Park Jin-Pyo's true crime drama Voice of a Murdererwithout referencing Bong Joon-Ho's much loved film Memories of Murder. The similarities are obvious. Both are based closely on true life events well publicized at the time, which means neither film makes any attempt at suspense. There's no point traveling that road when your entire target audience already knows how the story ends. And, frankly, it's a good thing there's no need to aim for suspense because both films revolve around crimes that remain unsolved to this day and as such neither can offer any true sense of closure. But as similar as the two films are there are significant differences as well, the most important being one of focus. Bong's film is a film about impotence, focusing on the police investigators who failed to capture South Korea's first serial killer. Park's film, on the other hand, is about loss, focusing on the parents struggling in vain to free their kidnapped son.
Han Gyeong-bae is one of South Korea's most well known and respected television personalities, the host of the nine o'clock news, known for his personal integrity and a common touch - attributes that seem to be pointing the way to an eventual run at public office. Han seems to have a perfect life. He is wealthy, respected, still ascending the social ladder and he has a beautiful wife at home taking care of his their son, the nine year old Sang-Woo. The greatest difficulty in his life is his wife's determination to work the flab off of their pudgy, candy obsessed boy and when that's the worst thing you've got going then life isn't all that bad. But things change dramatically for the couple one day when Sang-Woo simply disappears, whisked away from a local playground, the latest in a string of kidnappings.
The ransom call comes early. One hundred thousand won. Come alone. Don't call the police. Do exactly what I say and your son will be returned safely. But the drop doesn't go smoothly, the exchange never happens and Han and his wife are strung along for weeks, the entire ordeal lasting forty four days from start to finish. The police are called in but they only seem to make things worse, the villain always a step ahead and clearly smarter than any of the investigators. As time goes on hope ebbs and wanes and the once proud, successful couple can do nothing but watch their lives crumble around them.
You may notice that everything so far has been written about Han. This is deliberate, it reflects the structure of the film. Everything revolves around this one man, played by Seol Gyeong-gu. The kidnapper's face is never shown and only interacts with Han over the phone and Han's wife, Oh, is given little to do beyond panic and cry. The film is purely Seol's and this is both its greatest strength and weakness. A strength because Seol is simply an outstanding actor who does stellar work here. A weakness because the plot has little variation to it - Han simply waits to be contacted and tries to meet the kidnapper's demands only to fail repeatedly - as a result of this single minded focus and becomes repetitive as a result. There is no tension to the piece - the ending is contained in the title - and broadening the perspective could have given it some valuable diversity along with a broader context.
Director Park shoots muted, quietly effective film, one that gets from a to b with a minimum of muss while making the most of the tension within the situations. The anti-police bias so common in Korean film turns up here again, the squad portrayed as only marginally better than bumbling as the charge to "secret meetings" with sirens blaring and fix all of their resources on suspects with air tight alibis, though that bias is tempered some by the relationship that slowly develops between Han and the officer on "trunk detail", forced to spend the entire stakeout in the trunk of Han's car to record any calls that may come in on the car phone. That relationship is ahigh point of the film but the real coup comes with a surprising move at the end, an unvarnished slap with the reality of the story.
Voice of a Murderer is freshly available on Korean DVD, in a suitably elegant two disc set. The second disc is loaded up with special features useful only to Korean speakers while the first disc presents the film itself flawlessly with an excellent anamorphic transfer, dead solid English subtitles and a solid 5.1 audio track.
If we may return to the initial comparison Voice of a Murderer never quite rises to the level of Memories of Murder for one simple reason. Perhaps because the events of this film were fresher in the mind or more widely publicized director Park seems to have felt obliged to keep his film as tightly focused on the parents and the actual events as is humanly possible in what feels like a deliberate sign of respect for the feelings of those most directly involved and affected by this horrible crime. It's a noble sentiment but raw truth doesn't always make for the best story telling and Park never manages to transcend his material the way Bong does with his, he never quite manages to make this about anything larger than this one specific event and this one family. What he does with the film is admirable enough and those involved are to be commended for turning in quality, fearless performances, but Voice of a Murderer misses the chance to hit on larger, more universal issues and that seems a shame.