| This is a beautiful spy film, unlike any other that I’ve seen. It has a slow, even, ordinary-world pace, with detail-filled everyday settings filmed from slightly unusual angles. We often find ourselves looking over somebody’s shoulder. The music, almost all European classical, is sparingly used and never intrudes or manipulates.
The spies are all everyday people – middle to upper management types – who go to church, try to fix colleagues up with dates, wash their car, watch baseball on TV, go to batting cages, eat in not-t-o-charming neighborhood restaurants run by not-too-picturesque owners. But they’re all clearly spies, and would shoot, stab, torture, or beat you to death without hesitation if the job called for it.
Weather is featured, and the rain scenes are very beautiful. The lead couple quietly falls in love without emotional fireworks or scenes of passion. The tension necessary to spy films is clearly there, however; and the film grabs you from the very beginning and keeps your heightened attention to the very end, past the end even.
Han Suk Kyu is at the center of this; and his performance as a strong, serious, smart, committed double agent fully aware of his vulnerability in a world that could never be under anybody’s control, is very beautiful to follow. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. |
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