Park’s breakthrough success feels like a cinematic page-turner, set in the context of an investigation on a shootout incident at the border separating North and South Korea.

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A few years before his ‘Vengeance’ trilogy, which include Oldboy (2003), permanently raised his artistic street cred and established him as one of the foremost players of the Korean New Wave, Park Chan-wook broke into Korean popular cinema with Joint Security Area, at the time the highest-grossing movie in Korea’s box-office history. 

Utterly compelling, JSA feels like a cinematic page-turner; before you know it, an hour would have passed.  Adapted from Park Sang-yeon’s novel for the big screen, it is a testament to the screenwriters’ skill that they managed to keep the mystery aspects throughout the film. 

After a shootout at the border separating North and South Korea dramatically raised tensions between the two nations, a neutral party commissioned to investigate the incident steps in. It’s best to go into JSA blind and let the narrative unfold, the less said the better. 

“Here, the peace is preserved by hiding the truth.”

All I can say is that what makes Park’s film tick the right checkboxes isn’t just confined to his natural filmmaking skills or getting strong performances from the cast which include Lee Byung-hun, and the legendary Song Kang-ho, considerably younger then, as a North Korean sergeant, but how the main theme of brotherhood is set against the idea of patriotism. 

One of the criticisms levelled at the film has been its weak English-language parts, particularly the early stretch when the investigation is being set up by a Swiss-based peace unit. 

Finishing with a shot of understated poignancy, JSA while not as polished as Park’s subsequent films, remains a cultural touchstone and a thrilling political fantasy that we wish some of it were true. 

Grade: A-

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