Still best known for the gross outs and technical command of OLDBOY/’04 twenty years ago (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/oldboy-2004.html), and currently buzz-worthy from THE SYMPATHIZER/’24 (now streaming/not seen here), this recent feature shows Korean director Park Chan-wook in more traditional mode. Built from film noir elements, but not particularly dark or claustrophobic, it’s more of a Lady or the Tiger story as Busan police detective Park Hae-il works thru his latest baffling murder. Baffling less for the case (suicide or murder?), than for his reaction to his main suspect. Married, with a wife he only sees on wknds, he finds himself attracted to the elderly victim’s much younger wife (Tang Wei). Flirtation leads to an affair, but is he sleeping with a murderer or can he prove suicide? Months later, the suspect has remarried, moved to the town he and his wife live in, and reconnects with him (the wife instantly suspicious) just before this second husband dies. Was this one murder? Was the first husband’s death murder? She had killed before, assisting her elderly mother in her suicide. She certainly doesn’t act the grieving widow. More like a Black Widow. Park has a fine time getting all his plates spinning at the same time, but doesn’t always follow who you want him to. It makes a generous 2+ hour running time seems even longer. (At its most problematic in the first act.) Still, noir fanciers will enjoy imagining the film’s close connections to 1940s Hollywood noir. Perhaps with Barbara Stanwyck taking on the possibly guilty married suspect and Fred MacMurray as the flatfoot.
DOUBLE-BILL: *There’s more than one Stanwyck/MacMurray film to consider, but go for DOUBLE INDEMNITY/’44 with its great Billy Wilder/Raymond Chandler dialogue and, in a role sorely missed here, Edward G. Robinson personifying character conscience.
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