Police departments, and particularly the narcotics department, have often made good fodder for the thriller genre. Director Lee Kyoo-man showed that he was more than adept in the thriller genre in his second feature, the based-on-a-true-story “Children…”. For his third production “The Policeman's Lineage”, he looks at the police bureau and the narcotics department in a film that is based off Japanese novel “Keikan no Chi” by mystery fiction writer Joh Sasaki, already the subject of a Japanese tv adaptation.
“The Policeman's Lineage” is screening at Florence Korea Film Festival
The son of a late police officer, Choi Min-jae is an upright police detective who aims to live and die by the police code of conduct. After the death of a colleague, he is recruited by Internal Affairs commissioner Hwang In-ho, who suspects narcotics chief Park Kang-yoon to be involved in the officer's death. Park is the exact opposite of Choi, a man who drives a Mercedes and wears big brand suits and fancy watches, who will go to any extent legal or highly illegal to make sure he catches his perp and who may be in bed with the bad guys and getting big payoffs from them. Choi's assignment is to join Park's team as it tries to catch a conglomerate boss that dabbles in the drugs trade, while keeping an eye on Park and trying to get any evidence of his involvement in the death and getting any bribes.
“The Policeman's Lineage” has all the ingredients for a strong entry into the Korean thriller genre, a genre that has already given us many classics. It takes on themes much loved by Korean filmmakers and audiences: police corruption and the abuse of power and money. Here, the perspective of other police officials suspecting their colleagues is an interesting one. The production looks and sounds slick, very much in tune with what we expect from a good thriller from the country, with both Kang Kook-hyun's cinematography and Jang Young-gyu's music impressing in equal measure, even if they never manage to stand apart from the rest of the flock. The narrative is fast-paced and, despite a sense of familiarity, progresses in the right direction. The twists in the tale are frequent and done well.
However, there is such a thing as too much plot and Bae Yong-ik's adapted screenplay is certainly guilty of having just that. It crams a lot of story within itself, which proves overbearing even for its nearly two hours' runtime. It may progress at break-neck speed, but that does at times prove detrimental to the overall enjoyment of the viewers, who have to work hard to match pace with the many events and motives. The final twenty minutes too may seem a detour not worth taking, but the feature manages to bring itself on the right track come the conclusion, leaving audiences on just the right note.
Lee Kyoo-man rests a lot of his laurels on his cast and with the likes of Cho Jin-woong, Choi Woo-sik and Park Hee-soon at his disposal, one can rest assured that the performances succeed at being among the feature's high points. Cho Jin-woong's Park Kang-yong is a tough character, a suave officer who has money and likes using it, who wants to do good but will go to any bad depths to achieve it. It's a tricky balance which many might have not been able to achieve, but Cho manages to find it, keeping Park grounded, cool and menacing in equal measures. Likewise, Choi Woo-sik's Choi Min-jae is a role of dualities too, a man torn between his superior and his own ethics. Choi thrives on the material given to him, also looking the part of an officer green behind the ears who is in over his head. Park Hee-soon, on the other hand, is an actor capable of a lot of gravitas which is displayed here, but doesn't get many moments to make the character fully blossom.
There are frankly quite a few elements to like in “The Policeman's Lineage”, a perfectly serviceable thriller that entertains during its runtime. The sheer amount of story packed within may prove formidable and tiresome to follow for some, but it never becomes incomprehensible. For a production with the word “lineage” in its title, it follows the DNA of past thrillers efficiently. Despite that, it doesn't quite manage to create a legacy of his own for future endeavours to follow.
