The Boys

(, Chung Ji-young, South Korea, 2022)

Since Bong Joon-ho’s brilliant Memories of Murder (2003) and David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), ambitious crime-mystery films have become interested less in immediate procedures of police or journalistic investigation than in the corrosive effects of passing time and memory – and in the all-pervasiveness of systemic corruption.

This is the terrain of The Boys (not to be confused with the creepy 1998 Australian film of the same title), a reasonably sturdy effort by South Korean cinema veteran Chung Ji-young (Unbowed, 2012). It is based on the real-life case of three lads mistakenly arrested for robbery and murder in Wanju County – with the especially difficult complication that the trio actually confessed to the crimes.

A worried cop, ‘mad dog’ Hwang (Sul Kyung-gu), tries to get to the bottom of the mystery, but is thwarted by his superiors – until, 17 years later, and on the eve of his professional retirement, another precious opportunity to expose the truth presents itself.

But does the evidence now survive, and what can be learned by resifting the obscure traces and recollections of the past? And how to avoid the coercive tactics of the entire police force?

The Boys sits in a tradition of political melodrama, aiming to stir our emotions in the direction of seizing justice for all – no matter their age, race or class status.

© Adrian Martin 12 December 2022