Park Chan-wook - 2000 - South Korea - M (violence)

Drama/Mystery & thriller, 1h 47m

Two North Korean soldiers are killed in the border area between North and South Korea, prompting an investigation by a neutral body. Sgt. Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun) is the shooter, but lead investigator Maj. Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae), a Swiss-Korean woman, receives differing accounts from the two sides.

“Park Chan-wook’s career was launched with the blockbuster success of his timely and taut thriller set on the tense demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. Joint Security Area follows the urgent investigation of the mysterious death of two North Korean DMZ guards and the South Korean soldier immediately suspected.

Park’s meticulous attention to accuracy extends to the film’s expanded set of the DMZ—recreated at tremendous expense just miles away from the actual site—as well as the methodical procedures of the Swiss Korean UN investigator tasked with untangling the complex web of friendship and betrayal uncovered as she learns more about the soldiers and the strange symbolic space they inhabit and dutifully guard with their lives.

With its questioning of dehumanizing military authority Joint Security Area recalls classic military dramas such as The Caine Mutiny (1954) or Breaker Morant (1980). Park, however, brings another more intimate and poignant dimension into his depiction of the soldiers themselves whose loneliness and confusion embody the strange miasma and ominous immobility of the Cold War stalemate still dividing the Korean peninsula.”
– Harvard Film Archive