Nocturnal

Story: Bae Min-tae (Ha Jung-woo) used to be a gangster, but after serving time in prison for avenging an attack on his brother, he has left this life behind and works on a construction site. One day, however, he can't reach his brother Seok-tae, and so he starts to investigate. He goes to his former boss, Chang-mo (Jeong Man-sik), for whom his brother works. But he informs him that it is not the first time that Seok-tae dropped off the radar for a few days. Seok-tae's wife Moon-young (Yoo Da-in) cannot be found anywhere either, though. A short time later, Min-tae has to identify his brother's dead body. The police also question Min-tae and warn him not to go on a revenge campaign. But Min-tae is already searching his sister-in-law's apartment and finds out that the police actually consider the victim's wife to be the main suspect. In the process of investigating Moon-young's whereabouts, Min-tae meets up with a bestselling author (Kim Nam-gil), who was also questioned by the police as the suspect was attending his lectures and possibly had a more intimate relationship with him. It turns out that the writer's book has strong parallels to Seok-tae's death. Both the police and Min-tae try to find out why this is the case. At the same time, the author is now also desperately looking for the missing Moon-young.

Review: The introduction of this noir thriller promises a violent revenge story, but what awaits us instead is a surprisingly leisurely paced "detective" thriller focusing on finding the whereabouts of the sister-in-law. The antihero's investigation is steadily moving forward, but at a pace that quickly leads to disappointment. If you expect a brutal vendetta story here, you won't get your money's worth, as there are at best two action scenes in which Min-tae fights his way through a small horde of gangsters with his favorite weapon, a steel rod. But these violent outbreaks lack real necessity. They hardly advance the movie on an emotional level, instead they just seem as if they were thrown into the story, simply because that's part of the genre. And then there's the biggest shortcoming of "Nocturnal": The antihero should have been fleshed out more, so that we could actually empathize with him and understand why he is so devastated after his brother's death, doing everything he can to find the alleged murderer. In the beginning, we can have exactly this kind of sympathy for the protagonist. However, the more the story progresses, the less we feel able to root for Min-tae.

So, the story is not based on the concept of an antihero who wants to do something terrible for understandable reasons. Instead, the story alienates us further and further from him. His other motives, inner thought processes or his love for his brother are not elaborated on. And so, we have to ask ourselves why he is still looking for his sister-in-law with the same kind of doggedness, after he found out that his brother abused his wife and was a drug addict. Strictly speaking, this is just new information for the viewer, Min-tae already knew this. Which makes it impossible for us to root for him, and at the latest from the second half of the movie onwards you have to ask yourself who the focus of the story is supposed to be and who else we are supposed to sympathize with. Which actually only leaves the author, but this man remains so two-dimensional that he is mainly responsible for driving the story forward - after all, he was acquainted with the wanted woman and could therefore know where she is. You would at least have expected a proper confrontation between him and Min-tae, but the screenwriter also dealt with that in an extremely unspectacular manner.

So, the hero or anti-hero of the story turns out to be the villain. The fact that the movie doesn't completely fall apart is only due to actor Ha Jung-woo's ("Hijack 1971") natural charisma, which he is able to show off to its best advantage and which always works well with gangster characters. Apart from that, only Jung Man-sik ("I, the Executioner") manages to surprise in this movie with a rather typical role of a gangster boss - and you would actually have liked to see more of him. The relationship between the gangster boss and Min-tae, who used to work for him, would also have deserved more fleshing-out. In the end, the movie simply lacks interpersonal relationships. Moreover, we only get one real flashback, in which we see Min-tae and his brother. How are we supposed to get a genuine impression of the relationship between them? Unsurprisingly, this also ensures that the finale is rather unspectacular and has no emotional impact whatsoever. There is simply nothing touching in "Nocturnal", even though the original title of the thriller is "Broken", so you could have assumed that his brother's death would affect Min-tae beyond all measure.

Regarding the rest of the movie, the script doesn't exactly cover itself with glory either. The police are somehow in the game too, but neither the lead detective nor the female investigator, who is called into the case and therefore promises to finally get things rolling, really contribute anything to the story. After the investigators have already lagged behind the developments for quite a while, they even decide to simply follow the author and Min-tae. Maybe those two will get them through the finishing line. Then there is the fact that the murderer's identity has to be uncovered. Which happens pretty quickly, but of course, nobody in the audience would really believe this. There has to be another twist. And when it hits us, it is by no means eye-opening. In addition to this disappointment, you have to have a lot of patience, because hardly anything happens over long stretches of time. A few times, Min-tae's investigations only move forward because someone happens to show up at a noodle shop or café, who then mentions the name of the suspect. You can hardly call that good storytelling. Besides that, there are other absurdities, such as why everyone can simply enter Moon-young's apartment at will. This almost turns into a running gag.

Kim Jin-hwang, who is not only responsible for the screenplay but also for the directing, can't save his movie from mediocrity on a directorial level either. In terms of atmosphere, the flick is quite unspectacular too - a description which is often used in this review for a reason -, and unfortunately, there is nothing specific or original about it either. It's as if the director tried to copy from the most important representatives of the genre but while doing so ignored that those are mostly all about emotions, building a bridge to the viewer. Even if it was just centering around unstoppable rage. Since there is nothing like that in "Nocturnal", the viewer is quite disoriented at some point, and the few violent scenes feel like they were just carelessly thrown in there. In fact, you can't even call this thriller boring. Somehow Ha Jung-woo manages to carry the movie through this bumpy journey, but when we reach the destination, we realize that there was nothing exceptional about this flick. Which means that this movie certainly does not deserve a recommendation.

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