A detective investigates the death of a man who fell off a cliff. The dead man’s widow cooperates with the investigation, but the further the case progresses, the more the detective suspects her and the more he falls in love.
4k movies reviews
In the new film, Park Chang-uk, as before, explores the nature of human decisions of the utmost importance. Sometimes what a person makes will determine his future fate. And in a way that is irrevocable. The same irrevocable, Hitchcockian thriller-like life becomes the life of detective Jang Hae-jung, who is eager to plunge into the boiling vat of all kinds of murder investigations every time. He can’t stand a lot of blood – because the scary smell gets stuck inside, and from the lack of murder cases, he gets depressed. Living a measured life with his wife, the detective is confronted with a case in which, a man’s body is found. The murderer’s wife is suspected of the murder. And just moments later, Hae-joon is about to fall in love with Song So-rae, the victim and wife of the very man who was murdered. Along with his unexpectedly flustered feelings, he leads himself into a labyrinth: from which it seems there is no way to emerge as the same person, not for him, nor for all those who will be associated with this cold-blooded story.
Some call “Decision to Leave” the most mature work of Park Chang-ook’s career. I don’t think so. Ever since his debut feature, he’s been absolutely adamant that he’s not going to play the great filmmaker who grabs onto a particular genre time and time again and is in the business of cutting and polishing it. Even the most notorious pictures, whether Oldboy or Joint Security Area, don’t just show his childishness and play with the canons of genres. Chang-uk has always been the kind of mature director who knew exactly what he wanted and how he would show it. Amid all this, “Decision to Leave” looks like a wave that, identifying artistic potential, surges over the edge. There are feelings of love, feelings of anxiety, and notes of asceticism, inside and out. The film is a kind of symphony in which Park Chang-uk, the venerable conductor, not only plays the composition to precise notes, but instead gives it an unexpected spice in the form of transitions from spy thriller to love detective. And the permanent switching of modes for this noir is like a necessary solution, without which the next step for the characters is impossible.
And speaking of which. Jang Hae-joon is a native Korean whose confidence lives on as long as there are murders in the white world. Song So-rae is a native Chinese woman whose nature is hidden in an intermittent stay. While So-rae’s temporary home, which outwardly resembles a ship’s cabin, is still sailing and searching for shore, Hae-joon’s real home begins to drift away from him and remains somewhere far away in the misty highlands. And these enveloping details eventually turn the two heroes into the semblance of mountains and seas beyond control. Will the two become one? This philosophy is what leads Park Chang-uk to the factor of how the incompatible try to become one, and more importantly, what the consequences might be for the world around them. After all, what is scary and beautiful at the same time for this multifaceted universe of “Decision to Leave” is that love begins by accident.
The world of this film plays by fate, not by anyone’s will – while she speaks important words about love in Chinese, he, speaking only Korean, frantically tries to substitute tangible form for the incomprehensible sounds. Life is a game in which you can ignore all the rules. And fate does just that: it spits on all the rules, making the characters hostage to the situation. Whether this is good or not is unimportant. The emphasis is only on how strange and yet enchanting the world in which people live can be.
And it seems that Decision to Leave could vie for the title of one of the top love films. After all, it’s a poignant story about the forms of love in the modern world. While some decide to preserve their veins in a jam jar and hide their bodies under a shell (Chon-an, the detective’s wife), others, meanwhile, do everything to keep their ship from being washed ashore and remain a romantic-escapist vessel forever.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (71.4 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
Korean: Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Korean: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Korean: Dolby Digital 5.1
German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles
English, Mandarin (Traditional), French, German.
