Review of Lee Jong Suk’s “The Negotiation Game”

Lee Jong Suk’s The Negotiation Game (Hueopsang, 2018) was released five years late. South Korean thriller tired, amazed and puzzled Mikhail Trofimenkov.

Modern culture has taught that a good policeman must be mentally disabled. The prologue of The Game seems to be a simple illustration of this postulate. Unable to survive the death of the hostages in front of her, thanks to the clumsy work of the capture team, negotiator Ha (Yong Nam Chan) resigns. The victims of the supposedly domestic crime that knocked her down seem to be the pawns of the plot. But everything will turn out to be far from so simple, although rather late.

As usual, the heroine is pulled out of the house for the sake of the last task, so important that it is supervised by the president himself through his haughty secretary. From a pirate lair in Thailand, the formidable Min (Hyun Bin), an irresistibly handsome, sociopathic and heavy smoker, the king of the arms smuggling trade, came into contact. Ming took hostage Ha’s immediate superior, a correspondent for an influential Korean newspaper, and – to a heap – some other women and children screaming in horror.

What he needs is absolutely incomprehensible. Is it possible to mock humanity, to shoot someone in the leg on the air, and to kill someone. His desire to drink whiskey with the charming Ha, and also immediately deliver to an interview, defying Seoul traffic jams, either the editor-in-chief of that very newspaper, or the president of a powerful corporation, or the head of South Korean state security, can be considered pure trolling.

It is reasonable to assume that we have to painfully watch the inhuman efforts of Ha to keep the monster from killing. She needs to hold out for fourteen hours, during which the valiant special forces will fly to Thailand, parachute into the jungle, overcome water barriers like a crocodile and smash the beast’s castle to pieces. But again, everything will turn out to be far from so simple, although too late.

The pawns here are not really pawns, the monster is far from being a monster, the journalist is not a journalist at all, and the chief Ha is not what he seems. And the thriller about the negotiator itself is by no means a hymn to the valiant security officials, who are attacking the throat of psychotrauma.

Most of all, The Game is reminiscent of the great Italian thrillers of the 1970s, the films of Damiano Damiani, multiplied by oriental zeal: there is a lot of blood flowing, although, to Lee’s credit, he does not abuse brutal effects. In the cinema of Italy, tormented by political and mafia street war, simple crimes served as a trigger for an investigation of a conspiracy against the Republic. It’s the same here: every fifteen minutes the stakes go up.

Which, however, is not surprising for South Korea: it has long outdone former Italy in terms of the degree of political and moral decay. What, in the film, the local state security appears as a criminal organization? So back in 1979, her boss shot the president and his bodyguards at a friendly dinner. What, in the film, the tentacles of corruption sprout up to the Olympus of power? So after all, over the past thirty years, one of the presidents was sentenced to death, three – to horse terms for corruption, one committed suicide without waiting for a trial, and another had a son. What can I say: it remains to make films that justice, thanks not so much to honest Ha as to immoral Mins, may someday triumph. Or maybe it won’t prevail.