"Voice of a Murderer" + DVD Giveaway
The time is the early nineties. Kyeong-bae (played bySeol Kyeong-gu) is a national news anchor who lives a busy, albeit largely unremarkable life with his wife Ji-seon (played byKim Nam-joo) as they suss out generally boring domestic problems. This is all thrown into an uproar with the intrusion of a mysterious phone call from That Guy (voiced byKang Dong-won), who makes vague unsubstantiated threats. Really, after a certain point, it seems like That Guy is just a bit of a sadistic jerk.
That's no sarcastic quip, even if in full perspective there's a kind of dark comedy to"Voice of a Murderer". This is an immensely repetitive and depressing film where the constant extensions of the plot mainly serve to underline a single important point. The situation is not going to improve. Ever. After awhile the effect of That Guy's phone calls just gets to be rather numbing, because a threat can only be repeated so many times before it starts to sound insincere.
Yet even if that was what I was thinking, as the generally cynical film critic who watches too many of these movies, that's not what's going through the heads of Kyeong-bae and Ji-seon.Seol Kyeong-guandKim Nam-joodo not fill the screen with melodramatic overacting even though that's what the scenario calls for. These characters just blankly live their lives in a sort of flat despair, knowing that they're living in artifical terror yet unable to sum up the energy to explore any other emotion.
Contrast that with the clinical narrations given by That Guy. He has almost no emotional investment in the situation at all even as he tries to exploit Kyeong-bae and Ji-seon for personal gain. While writer/directorPark Jin-pyotries to give That Guy a playful side, I was struck by howKang Dong-won's voice shows surprisingly little variation. When the format switches around somewhat later in the movie, That Guy just blankly accepts the new conditions, indicating that in this greater game, he has little more real control than any of his victims.
Based on a true story,"Voice of a Murderer"overall makes a point of eschewing complex interesting motives for a more baseline and generally distressing thesis- that emotional pain is horrific and some people just don't care. While it's somewhat comforting to think of grisly stories having a happy ending, realistically speaking, failures are more numerous than successes. They just don't have as much publicity.
This much is explicitly spelled out by the ending- which while negative, is probably not the kind of negative you're expecting. See, Kyeong-bae and Ji-seon are fictional characters. We can leave them alone and move on with our lives. Not everyone is so lucky when it comes to major trauma. That's the emotional resonance"Voice of a Murderer"hits and succeeds on, with a final sequence that's difficult to watch even when it's just simple text written out on screen. This movie is sufferring incarnate, with no pretty style around to offer catharsis to the misery.
Review by William Schwartz
"Voice of a Murderer"is directed byPark Jin-pyoand featuresSeol Kyeong-gu,Kim Nam-joo,Kim Young-cheolandKang Dong-won.
Source from :Hancinema