Review: Decision to Leave

-


Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) is a detective investigating the death of a man who fell off the top of a cliff. He begins to suspect the late man's wife, a Chinese immigrant to Korea, Seo-rae. (Tang Wei) In following her, he becomes infatuated.

Park Chan-wook's latest is currently streaming on Mubi, a service that I normally don't subscribe to, but went for a free trial just to view this. It's also South Korea's submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars, so I knew I had to check it out. Having enjoyed all of Park's work in the past, I had high hopes.

At the heart of Decision to Leave is a murder mystery, and those I can't get enough of. That part of the film was very engaging, but I had a hard time buying the romance the film was supposed to be selling. Hae-joon becomes infatuated with Seo-rae. He has a perfectly good wife at home, but he falls for her. She eventually reciprocates these feelings in her own way, and I never once believed any of it. The two actors, while very good just didn't have any chemistry together. No spark, no banter, at most I bought half hearted curiosity between the two, and because of that I didn't love this as much as I wanted to.

It's a well crafted film and I'm glad it's available for so many to watch, but I needed more from the leads. It's a bit of a bummer South Korea chose to submit this over the wonderful Broker, where the leads oozed chemistry together.

I still think it's worth your time and watch, but I had higher hopes Park considering I've loved every film I've seen of his. 

Grade: B-

Comments

  1. thevoid99December 31, 2022 at 3:58 PM

    I did enjoy this as it was different from Park's other films in terms of its lack of gory and intense violence as it was also more accessible than I thought it would be. Its ending was devastating to watch.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamJanuary 3, 2023 at 7:54 AM

      That's true, after watching more of his films on Mubi it did feel different, but I didn't love it as much as I expected to.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by, let's talk movies!
(comments are moderated to reduce spam)

Popular posts from this blog

Random Ramblings: The Radio Flyer Conundrum

-
Image
Recently, I was talking to someone about who I thought were the best child actors when I was also a child.  Two that really stood out to me were Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazello, and one film those two were in together was called Radio Flyer.  Then I was reminded about the uniqueness of this film. Instead of reviewing the film, I wanted to have an open discussion about the ending. It deals with a tough issue; child abuse. What I’ve noticed is the way that the film ends is interpreted many different ways, and the filmmakers never came forward to say what was right and wrong. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions on it. How did you interpret the ending? Obviously spoiler alerts will follow.. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is this: Two young boys, Mikey (Wood) and Bobby (Mazello) move in with their single mother and her boyfriend, who refers to himself as ‘The King’. It doesn’t take long for The King to start physically abusing Bobby, and the
Read more

Indie Gems: Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

-
Image
Passionate about your profession? I had never heard of this film until it ended up on one of Jason's favorite horror movie lists around Halloween. It immediately sounded interesting to me, so of course I threw it in my Netflix queue. (and if I'm just now watching it after adding it around Halloween, you know how ridiculous my queue is) Taylor (Angela Goethals) is a journalist who, along with a film crew decides to follow around a serial killer named Leslie Vernon. (Nathan Baesel) He plans on doing the typical slasher thing - getting a bunch of drunk teens in an abandoned house and knocking them off one by one. He gets advice from a retired serial killer, Eugene (Scott Wilson) and is threatened by a man who's on to him, Doc Holloran (Robert Englund) Taylor and crew are there capturing it all. Leslie Vernon is fucking hilarious to start with, and clearly very passionate about what he does. He tells Taylor all of his secrets and can barely contain his excitemen
Read more

Please join me in my Favorite Movie Titles Blogathon!

-
Image
Earlier this week I made a post where I ran through the letters of the alphabet with my favorite movie titles. There were a few people that suggested I turn it into a blogathon, and I've never done that before. So here goes nothing! Since this is my first attempt at a blogathon, it's all pretty simple, and it's hopefully a quick post that everyone can join in. Rules: 1) Going through the alphabet, list your favorite movie title beginning with each letter.  2) You don't have to necessarily  like the movie to use it's title.  3) Use the banner at the top of this post in yours. 4) Please have submissions in by Friday, May 30th*. (But I'll be honest, if you send them to me after that date, I'll still add them to my post.) You can either leave a link to your post in the comments here or tweet it to me, ( @ramblingfilm )  Thanks everyone! :)  *I had to move the date back a week due to Photobucket threatening me with bandwidth issues. But
Read more