Joint Security Area

Provocateur Park Chan-wook, who subsequently wrote and directed the ferocious SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (2002) and OLDBOY (2003), finds the human tragedy beneath the familiar conventions of the military-investigation thriller. It begins in the middle of a dark, quiet night suddenly shattered by gunfire: The crime scene is a guardhouse on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone at Panmumjon, a half-mile strip of land dividing the Northern Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Southern Republic of Korea. Two Northern border guards are dead and a third lies wounded in a North Korean hospital; a South Korean guard, sunk in a state of shock, is being held in ...