Confession of Murder (South Korea: Nae-ga sal-in-beom-i-da), 2012.
Written and Directed by Byeong-gil Jeong.
Starring Won-yeong Choi, Gwang Jang, Jae-yeong Jeong, Eun-ji Jo, Yeong-ae Kim, Ji-a Min, Shi-hoo Park and Choi Won Young.
SYNOPSIS:
After the statute of limitations expires on a series of high profile murders, a man writes a book claiming to be the killer, setting off a firestorm of media attention as the families of the dead and the cop in charge of the case hunt for justice.
Byeong-gil Jeong’s first feature, Action Boys, was a documentary following the careers of young Korean stunt-men, so it’s appropriate that in Confession Of Murder he probably gave work to every one of them. Confession Of Murder is essentially a series of stunts, and occasionally an immensely enjoyable one. Where it fails is when the focus moves away from the stunts, and towards it’s less compelling elements.
The plot is, inevitably, absurd. Policeman Choi Hyeong-goo’s (Jae-yeong Jeong) wife is murdered by a masked serial killer, whom he is unsuccessful in pursuing. 15 years later, just before the killer’s statute of limitations is set to expire, thus protecting him from prosecution, a man named Lee Doo-Seok (Park Si-hoo) reveals himself with a book (entitled Confession Of Murder), and Choi must work to prove that this is indeed the man who killed his wife. What follows is 120 minutes of twists and shock-reveals that after long cease to make any sense at all. I won’t spoil them, but it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Confession Of Murder seems to present itself as social satire, which feels a little generous. What satire there is lying between the extended set-pieces and hammy stand-offs is mostly obvious, and doesn’t say anything particularly new. But then that really isn’t the point. The point of Confession Of Murder is to put stunt-performers into the most absurd, impossible situations for our pleasure, again and again and again. taken on these turns, it’s a resounding success. There may come a point during the exquisite fifteen minute ambulance chase where you realise that it is serving absolutely no purpose to the narrative. Suppress that thought, and you’ll have a good time. indulge it, and you’ll spend the rest of the film focusing on the total improbability of every twist, the wildly fluctuating behaviour of every character, and the logical inconsistency of almost every single thing depicted on screen. Most likely, you’ll end up doing both, and it’s here that Confession fails. In order to get away with this kind of slapshot narrative it has to be backed up by the action, and for the first hour or so, it is. Every twist serves to give us another imaginative, bizarre set-piece, and the pace is brisk enough that you probably won’t even notice how little sense any of it makes. The second half of the film, however, decides to zoom in on this half-baked narrative, at which point Confession Of Murder promptly deflates. The terminally-long scenes at the television studio, for example, or the massively drawn-out reveal of the second suspect add nothing to the film at all, and yet take up a good third of the total running time. A film that could have happily fit into 80 minutes instead lingers on for two hours.
There are moments of Confession of Murder that will stick in the mind. The dizzying camerawork of the opening scene, the aforementioned ambulance chase on the highway, and a clever use of night-vision in a later scene are in the moment, exhilarating. Indeed these moments are the reason Confession Of Murder exists in the first place, yet by the end Jeong seems more interested in the convoluted mystery he’s set up, and doesn’t allow the film to indulge in the one thing it does so well.
Flickering Myth Rating: Film ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★
Jake Wardle
Originally published October 11, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
