Two North Korean soldiers are killed in the border area between North and South Korea, prompting an investigation by a neutral body. The sergeant is the shooter, but the lead investigator, a Swiss-Korean woman, receives differing accounts from the two sides.
Park Chan-Wook's Joint Security Area is a fairly straightforward whodunit with a pointedly political theme and an unapologetically humanist message.
– A.O. Scott,
New York Times,
15 Jun 2005
rotten:
Park's film reveals its double agency by swinging between emotion-charged flashbacks of weepie male bonding and the investigative longueurs of the icy, half-Korean, half-Swedish female officer in charge of mopping up the brotherly bloodbath.