7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Once a hotshot spy for North Korea, Dong-chul has defected and is now lying low in the South as he searches for his wife and daughter's killer. But when his boss is murdered and he is framed for it, his revenge becomes much more urgent.
Starring: Gong Yoo, Park Hee-soon, Jo Sung-ha, Yoo Da-in, Jo Jae-yoonForeign | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Korean: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Korean: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The so-called “Axis of Evil” includes the seemingly hermetically sealed nation of North Korea, but as the bristling 2013 South Korean thriller The Suspect makes clear, the axis may have at least partially tipped southward itself, courtesy of a host of top echelon North Korean defectors as well as a duplicitous South Korean or two. The long simmering Korean conflict is a major subtext of The Suspect, though for Western audiences who probably consider any discussion of the relationship between the neighbors and erstwhile unified nation either boring beyond belief or at best Ancient History, there’s really no major problem in understanding the basic ins and outs of this film’s admittedly convoluted storyline. That said, The Suspect requires a bit of patience, for in its slam bang way, it breathlessly marauds through a lot of information for at least its first hour, not always dealing with events in a strictly chronological or even fully explicated manner. There’s a none too subtle evocation of the same manic tendencies that informed The Bourne Trilogy, but here, under the hyperkinetic eye of director Won Shin-yun, action set pieces tend to just suddenly erupt out of the ether with no foreshadowing, filling the screen with incredible stunt work and gasp inducing vertiginous camera moves, only to just as suddenly fade away as the already hopped up narrative once again takes over. For those who don’t mind this kind of intentionally bumpy roller coaster ride, The Suspect is a lot of fun, if also occasionally a bit exhausting.
The Suspect is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot digitally with a variety of cameras, The Suspect boasts a very sharp image almost all of the time, with excellent fine detail in the glut of extreme close-ups Won Shin-yun seems to favor (see any number of the screenshots included with this review for several good examples). Some of the film has been fairly aggressively color graded, although the usual blue tones for spy thrillers have been replaced by a kind of green-yellow tint, something that surprisingly does not seem to rob the image of much if any fine detail. Contrast is generally strong and depth of field in several outdoor shots is outstanding. The only real complaint here is a very light dusting of noise in a couple of darker sequences. Otherwise, The Suspect looks great in high definition.
The Suspect's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (in the original Korean) provides the expected amount of boisterous LFE, along with some extremely well done immersion courtesy of a whole host of good foley effects in the virtually nonstop action scenes. The hand to hand combat is full of great cracking and popping noises that dot around the side channels, and other action sequences, like the madcap skydiving segment, have similar attention paid to very immersive sound design. Dialogue and score are both presented very cleanly and clearly in this track. Fidelity is top notch and dynamic range is extremely wide.
Clocking in at well over two hours, by the time The Suspect delivers the last of several twists, some viewers may have already collapsed from exhaustion, especially since this film rarely takes a moment to relax, cartwheeling madly from action set piece to action set piece. What's actually more than a bit surprising here is how fully developed the two main characters end up being by the time everything is said and done. There's a lot about The Suspect you've seen before in other films, but it's assembled here with a great deal of craft, if not nuance, and the result is a breathless adventure that doesn't even require a Master's Thesis understanding of what the 38th parallel is all about. Technical merits here are generally very strong, and even without much in the way of supplements, The Suspect comes Highly recommended.
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