J.S.A.: Joint Security Area

A Korean military mystery-thriller with a political conscience and $30 million worth of Hollywood production values, J.S.A.: Joint Security Area looks slick and successfully weaves momentous themes of brotherly honor and reconciliation between a people divided into North and South. But the devil is in the details of its simplistic yet unnecessarily convoluted plot about a cross-border shooting incident. The story follows an international investigation led by a pretty, young, and inexperienced Swiss-Korean woman whose father was an exiled North Korean general; as she peels away layers of mystery, a possible conspiracy/cover-up begins to emerge. The bulk of the film, however, takes place in an extended flashback that arrives without warning and slowly recounts how a secret, symbolic friendship formed between opposing border guards on the graveyard shift at a backwoods outpost along the DMZ—and how it eventually led to tragedy. Director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) often burdens his cast with clumsy stage business and structures scenes to smokescreen plot points that would be otherwise obvious, but a few very good performances and the sincerity of the movie's deeper implications help to overcome its weaknesses. A strong optional purchase. (R. Blackwelder)