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Hur Jin-ho’s star-studded “The Assassin(s)” turns the holes in a public investigation into an imaginative mystery along the lines of Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” Like Stone’s provocative thriller, Hur crafts a clockwork political
saga sure to spark curiosities about the attempted assassination of strongman South Korean prime minister Park Chung-hee in 1974, which resulted in the death of his wife, first lady Yuk Young-soo, as well as a young bystander.
The film ties these events into larger concerns surrounding freedom of the press and some inventive government conspiracies. Your mileage may vary when it comes to the extent of these fabrications, even though “The Assassin(s)” begins with a disclaimer hinting at its own fictions. Regardless, its drama is solid and propulsive, beginning with a group of journalists being harangued by the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency) for publishing troublesome investigations en route to the botched assassination (intentionally so, according to the film’s internal logic).
The three most prominent characters are charismatic and sympathetic in equal measure. Two of them are journalists at the Dong-sung Daily, who mount a heroic stand against government forces at a time of severe censorship. Fiery rookie Young-il (Lee Min-ho) — the younger brother of a connected official — is assigned to cover the prime minister’s Liberation Day speech when the shooting goes awry, leading him to witness the events first-hand. The older, world-weary Jae-hwan (Park Hae-il) leads the City Desk, and investigates the event from a distance with the help of his police source, diligent detective Cheol-goo (Yoo Hai-jin).
The local policeman isn’t just present on the day, but tries to stop the eventual assassin from entering the auditorium for the prime minister’s speech, until he’s directed otherwise by senior authorities. He’s punished regardless by suits who refuse to listen, galvanizing the characters’ investigations into a larger collusion.
With a murderer’s row of supporting actors — like Park Hoon as a vicious KCIA goon harassing the Dong-sung workers, and Bae Seong-woo as the paper’s editor, trapped between maintaining journalistic integrity and bowing to censorious demands — the film establishes and unravels its drama at lightning speed. Hur judiciously constructs scene after scene that pulls and pushes the various probes closer to and further from the mysterious truth, which feels at once obscured and hidden in plain sight. As the puzzle pieces shift slowly into place, these revelations are jaw-dropping (once again, in their highly fictitious context), leading to a journalistic urgency.
Like any good cover-up movie, “The Assassin(s)” luxuriates in process and proficiency, following its cops and journalists sleuthing about to ask questions and peek at documents, poking their noses where they shouldn’t. It’s an invigorating kind of cinema, and Hur knows exactly how and when to tighten the screws, bringing his characters face to face with critical dangers, and with identities shrouded in mystery. These unspool in the form of action scenes where the stakes aren’t just personal safety, but the larger ideals of a nation under political suppression. Its tale of a Zainichi assassin (an ethnic Korean in Japan), as well as fraying political tensions between the North and South, take its characters far and wide, in a follow-the-money treasure hunt dangerously close to the halls of power.
To spin total concoctions into something so riveting is — for better or worse — an admirable cinematic skill, one Hur uses to turn a tale of forensic malfeasance into mass entertainment of considerable quality. (At Toronto, where the film premiered, it was the second runner-up for the International People’s Choice Award.) There are unanswered questions about these events to this day, and while “The Assassin(s)” isn’t the answer anyone was looking for, the movie taps into a national mood of frustrated anti-authoritarianism, while playing melodramatic tribute to those willing to speak truth to power. The result is rousing, popcorn-munching fun.
