Korean thriller about the castling of a killer and a policeman
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Action-packed films from South Korea are an increasingly frequent guest in Russian cinemas, especially crime stories. Director Kim Jae-hoon’s debut “In the Body of a Killer” tries to surprise audiences in this seemingly trampled field – and partly succeeds.
Seoul is rocked by a series of brutal murders: a group of sadists not only kills women, but broadcasts live how they chop up the bodies. The beat hitting the ears, the semi-darkness of the room, the unknown in phosphorescent makeup for skeletons, gods or the dead – it seems that hell has broken loose, but instead of boilers and sulfur, its aesthetics now mixes neon noir and metropolis chic. Following the trail is an experienced detective, Choi Jae-hwan (Oh Dae-hwan), who has been in the police for almost a quarter of a century and has changed more than one partner in his dog work. So another young colleague – also a son-in-law – becomes a victim of hasty decisions: he went to detain the suspects without waiting for help.
A brutal death – and the samsara of law and order goes into a new circle: again, Choi will come out to the sadistic vloggers in a duet with the young Kim Min-sung (Jang Jae-ho), who, on the advice of the elder, will “take his time slowly.” Now the veteran will get into trouble, deciding at any cost to prevent the suspect (Jang Dong Yoon) from leaving – and after the chase, both will disappear without a trace. To return only a month later – with memory loss and a strange revelation. The detained young sadist Cha Jin Hyuk will claim that he is Choi Jae Hwan, whose consciousness mysteriously ended up in the body of the killer.
The debut of Kim Jae-hoon, in the original simply called “Devils”, is at the same time a travesty to the ideas about South Korean cinema and at the same time seems to be devoid of clearly expressed specificity. A similar plot – with darkness, neon, mildly swashbuckling bloodletting and brutally sentimental cops – is easy to imagine in Hollywood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The dashing dramatic hook – a killer in the body of a family man, an experienced cop under the guise of a sadist – is reminiscent of the dynamics of Face/Off (1997) with Cage and Travolta, and the confrontation between the duo is reminiscent of Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). True, reducing “The Devils” to the conclusion that the line between the police and crime is dangerously thin is still mockingly simple. This requires neither dismemberment, nor the exchange of bodies, nor that plot trick that the debutant carefully prepared for the grateful viewer.
To put it bluntly, the construction of “In the Body of a Killer” is reminiscent of the nightmare of a detective with extensive murder experience who does not “bring the work home”, but it – sometimes literally – comes on its own. Elusive online scarecrows who trade in snuff on the darknet and use mysterious Bitcoin are only an obvious threat to Choi’s family: his wife Jin Sook (Wang Ji Hye) and youngest daughter Hyun Ah (Shin Soo Yeon). Risks of becoming close to one of your colleagues and losing a family member: routine anxiety. The inability to train everyone – and he has been in the department almost as long as the head (Choi Gwi Hwa) – is an unpleasant oversight for a control freak. Finally, the blurring of the limits of violence is the main test of every day: not only in the sense of the confusion of the “work” and “home” modes, but in the evolution of police methods. If the experience of extracting testimony under torture exists, does that mean that adherents of the technique are still among us?
This is the boundary that Kim Jae-hoon explores in “In the Body of a Killer,” gradually clarifying how a sadist and a policeman differ from the rest: a partner, a boss, an accomplice, a relative. In some places the director lacks imagination and dexterity – for example, in the neon flashbacks Cha Jin-hyuk for some reason sees himself in the first person – but the film leaves no doubt: violence does not dissolve in the air, and those who have tasted blood are increasingly less able to distinguish between friends and foes. Or, to put it more poetically, the dragon slayer becomes a dragon himself. Even if it remains in sleep mode for the time being. This fear permeates the spiral of the plot, which is close not so much to the criminal tradition of Korean cinema with “Memories of Murder” (2003) or “Hear No Evil” (2021), but rather to the brutal horror of Kim Ji-woon “I Saw the Devil” (2010), and open – again in the spirit of the Hollywood 1990s – the finale. No matter how this police story ends, Seoul will definitely not be able to sleep peacefully.
In theaters from February 1
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