Sa-lam-eul chat-seub-ni-da (2009) Reviews

• Bleak hopelessness repeated for 95 minutes

  dbborroughs2011-05-24

  Well made and well acted film is little more than a collection of petty cruelties strung together in a black humored sort of way. A real estate agent a local mentally handicapped man when life abuses him. he's raked over the coals by a demanding girlfriend who utterly ignores her infant daughter. He's also having several affairs and trying to scam his customers. Add to the mix the disappearance of dogs and people and a few scenes set up just to get the audience feeling uneasy and you have Missing Person in a nutshell. The problem with the film is not that it's "bad" or badly done, it's just that the film doesn't have much of a point. The idea that cruelties trickle down and often come back on us, or that some of us actually need the cruelty is nothing new. It's not a big revelation since after say fifteen minutes the film has set up the pattern which just get darker and darker with no additional insight. It's not a bad movie as a such,it's just that I could have walked out at any point after fifteen minutes and gotten just as much out of the film, even if I didn't know what happened in the remaining seventy five. Actually by staying I got the full effect of the bleak hopeless feeling the film creates in the viewer. Sadly there is no reason for it, especially since a late in the game suggests that maybe there is a better way. A misfire.