My father has Alzheimer’s. It is early stages yet, so things are mostly okay. He sometimes forgets things that he’s just done, or other little details, but he always knows where he is and who I am. His father had it as well, and I watched Grandpa go through its entire course. It was awful. He often didn’t know who his wife or his children were. He’d forget where he was and what he was doing. He started hoarding money. It is an awful, awful disease.
As it turns out, it can also be a pretty good twist in a South Korean thriller.
Byeong-soo (Sul Kyung-gu) killed his father when he was a teenager. The father was a horrible man who often beat Byeong-soo and his sister. When the cops never came to get him, Byeong-soo began to believe the murder was justified. And then he began thinking maybe other murders would be justified. He became an avenging angel, murdering anyone he felt deserved it.
The years rolled by, and the bodies piled up. But then he had an accident, and it did something to him. Dementia came next, and a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. He often has blackouts, and his memory is not so good. He stopsed killing and becomes a model citizen and loving father.
His daughter, Eun-hee (Kim Seol-hyun), knows nothing of his past. She cares for him and gives him a little microrecorder that he can use to record everything he does in a day. This, she thinks, will help his memory.
One day he gets into a fender bender with a man named Min Tae-joo (Kim Nam-gil). This causes Min Tae-joo’s trunk to pop open. There is something wrapped in plastic inside, and blood is dripping to the road. Min Tae-joo says it is a deer he hit earlier, but Byeong-soo recognizes human blood when he sees it and the cold look in Min Tae-joo’s eyes. This man, he knows, is a killer. More than that, he knows he must be the man who has been killing young women in his province. Three bodies have already shown up.
Ah, but Min Tae-joo also recognizes a killer when he sees one and decides to play a game. He discovers Byeong-soo has a daughter and begins to woo her. He sneaks into his house and reads his journal. Suddenly it is serial killer versus serial killer, except one of them can’t remember who he is half the time.
The film never really manages to rise above that pulp plot. The dementia angle adds some interesting twists. It creates a sort of unreliable narrator. The film is told through Byeong-soo’s point of view, so sometimes we’ll see something happen, and then he’ll question whether or not it was real, thus making us wonder the same thing. But it is also used a few too many times as a plot device. Beyong-soo will come close to killing Min Tae-joo, but then his eye will twitch (the film’s indication that he’s having an episode), and he’ll get away.
It mostly plays his Alzheimer’s as a plot device, as something to add an edge to the proceedings. We get a feel for how it affects Eun-hee, and there is a cop friend of Byeong-soo who reacts with astonishment whenever he either cannot remember him or he actually does. I can’t really complain that the film doesn’t spend a lot of time with the emotionality of dealing with that disease, as I’m not sure if I’d be able to take it. And it isn’t that it’s handled poorly here, but this is definitely not a feel about that disease and its effects on both those who have it and those that must take care of them.
Min Tae-joo is a fairly generic villain. He’s your typical basic cable serial killer. He is a cop in this one, so that’s interesting, except the film doesn’t really delve very deeply into that angle. Sul Kyung-gu is excellent as our anti-hero, and the film remains quite entertaining and thrilling. The final fight scene is well staged, and I mostly dug the entire film. But it’s never anything more than you expect.
themidnightcafe.org 