Madre

As quirky and original as you'd expect from the South Koreans. MOTHER is a lengthy mystery film featuring an unusual storyline about a mother who seeks justice for her unfairly imprisoned son. Along the way, there's all the kind of bizarre supporting characters, atypical incident and genuinely surprising plot twists that you'd expect from a Korean film. This is a movie that keeps you watching throughout despite the slow pacing and lack of action.

The character development is excellent: fully natural, low key throughout, and thoroughly involving. Unsurprisingly, the actors selected to pay the various characters are just right for the part, particularly Hye-ja Kim who we only ever know as 'mother'. She's a unique choice of lead and fits the role perfectly. Won Bin, who made an excellent action hero in THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, is equally excellent here as the slow-witted son and he really gets his teeth into the part.

MOTHER may be a slow burner of a film, but it has a subtle way of truly involving the viewer in the storyline. The tension builds as the climax nears, and then the movie hits you with some moments of quiet devastation that prove a shock to the core. Fans expecting another pulse-pounding thriller like THE YELLOW SEA may be disappointed, but those with open minds will have a ball.

Yoon Do-Joon has an intellectual disability. His friend is a bit of a trouble maker. His mother is always worried about him and protective to the extreme. A young girl is murdered and the lazy police of this small Korean town blame the obvious and helpless Yoon Do-Joon. The police interrogate him and make him sign a confession but Yoon Do-Joon is not really aware that he is signing his entry to prison. The mother, confident about her son's innocence will investigate the case and will go to any extent to free her son.

After the success of The Host (2006), Joon-ho Bong has crafted an intimate slow burning thriller with suspense elements that is contained in a small town, with small characters, but has a great scope. This movie is more similar to his first two movies, which I highly recommend. Hye-ja Kim is excellent as the mother. Her performance is understated but at the same time intense, cold and at the same time powerful. The cinematography is beautiful. The film moves along and builds slowly, more akin to the tempo of the small town we're visiting for the duration of the film, but the twists, turns, and suspense make it a highly rewarding and satisfying ride.

This is a decent film with a good plot line. However the delivery is slow and could be better. The lead character who plays the Mother, typifies a classic maternal figure. She dotes on her son and is constantly worrying for, and nagging her son. He sleeps next to her every-night and the son is the Mother's world.

When her son (the brilliant Bin Won) is accused of murder, the Mother fights for his justice and attempts to seek out the truth. At this point the story goes through a slow pace and a series of clues and knowledge is gathered, but the viewer is left wondering where this is leading and how this is going to progress.

Suddenly, the last half an hour of the film, the plot begins to get interesting again and we see the true characteristics of the Mother which is superbly portrayed. The conclusion of the film is somewhat shocking, but, on reflection of the entire film, is not surprising.

Overall, this has a good plot and is definitely one to watch, albeit slow moving at times.

After a night of drinking, Do Joon (Bin Won), an intellectually-challenged young man, encouraged by his reckless buddy Jin-tae (Ku-jin), attempts to pick up a young high school girl Ah-jung walking home alone. Shockingly, the next day, Do Joon is arrested for the girl's murder as his mother looks on helplessly. Seen at the Vancouver Film Festival, Bong Joon-ho's Mother is an intelligent, suspenseful, and darkly comic revelation of the lengths to which an overbearing but deeply loving mother will go to pursue justice for her son who, she believes, has been wrongly convicted of murder.

Though there is an evocative score by Lee Byeong-woo, the film's use of ambient sounds such as the slashing of Hye-ja's herb chopper and the rustling of leaves add to an ominous mood, though it often clashes with the absurdist events seen on screen. Set in a small Korean town, the elderly mother, played by Korean TV star Kim Hye-ja in one of the most nuanced and emotive performances of the year, makes a living by selling herbal medicine and providing illegal acupuncture treatments. Convinced of her son's innocence, she will stop at nothing, even violence, to find the real killer. She learns details about the dead girl's personal life and talks to alternative suspects, even though even she is not fully prepared for the twists and turns that her investigation will take.

The film opens with a shot of a lone elderly woman walking in a vast expanse of open field, reminiscent of the opening shot in Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou Chou. As she approaches the camera, the background music becomes rhythmic and the woman begins a strange, almost provocative dance. The scene then shifts to her business where she is keeping a close eye on her 27-year-old son Do-Joon who she feels needs her constant protection. Playing in the street with a dog, the boy is knocked over by a speeding hit and run driver in a Mercedes-Benz.

Uninjured, Do-Joon and Jin-tae chase the car to a golf course where the two attack the drivers of the Benz with sticks while collecting numerous golf balls, later to be used in evidence in court. On the fateful night, after Do-Joon is thrown out of a bar for being drunk, he pursues Ah-Jung home and the next day is arrested for murder, although details of what happened are murky. Bong shows the police procedural as in Memories of Murder to be on the lackadaisical side and conveys the impression that everyone involved is only out for their self-interest, including police, lawyers, friends, junk dealers, and schoolgirls.

Reminiscent of the quirky, offbeat films of Alfred Hitchcock, Mother is an intense, witty, and engaging psychological thriller with enigmatic characters that do not just populate the screen but are vitally alive. In one outstanding scene that will etch itself forever in your memory, Hye-ja attends the funeral of the girl her son is alleged to have murdered. Although besieged by distraught family members who think her son is a murderer, she has the fortitude to look them in the eye and proclaim "my son could never do something like that". Although "barking dogs don't bite", this woman is one "mutha" of an exception.

It's too bad that because this film is ostensibly about an old lady it must be considered a "smaller" film in Bong's oeuvre. It's not. It is every bit as brilliant, and as large, as Memories of Murder, in my opinion.

In many ways this is the natural, and equal, follow-up to Memories of Murder. It's every bit the caper film that one was, and, although slightly more somber in tone, the film keeps unraveling in directions you don't expect making it much more a plot driven movie than a character study. Kim Hye-ja is, however, magnificent as the titular (gawd I hate that word but I'm using it anyway) mother. There is a scene in this film where she tells the family of the victim her son didn't do it and her eyes are so electrically charged it made me jump back from the screen. Mother fires on all cylinders. The direction, cinematography, script, and acting are all grade A. It's one of those films where each of the secondary characters steals the show for a brief period. (How 'bout that cop who kicks the apple from Won Bin's mouth?) Bong does a remarkable job of populating the world of this film with real people and manages to give them depth and development in a very short period of time. I confess to having a little trouble tracking the other female characters in the film, but no matter. There is a scene (without spoiling anything here) where Kim Hye-ja asks the other 'retarded' kid if he has a mother and it's one of the most complex and heart-rending scenes in cinematic history. Hyperbole notwithstanding, just freakin' WOW! on that one when you ponder just why she is crying.

I wasn't sure where Bong was going to end up going as a film maker. Barking Dogs Never Bite was a reasonable debut. Memories of Murder, a masterpiece. But was it a lucky shot? I'm glad I don't have to consider the dismal Antarctic Journal a Bong film if I don't want to. The Host was lots-o-fun, but that's the one that worried me. Maybe he was going to start making blockbuster type films. But now, after recently seeing his contribution to Tokyo!, and now Mother, I have every reason to believe he is going to kick my butt with interesting film for a long time.