Decision to Leave (2022)

	Directed by: Park Chan-wook	ORIGINAL TITLE Heojil kyolshim COUNTRY South Korea GENRE Drama/Romance/ Mystery RUNNING TIME 139 minutes
	Produced by: Park Chan-wook
	Written by: Chung Seo-kyung Park Chan-wook

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Song Seo-rae	Tang Wei	½
Det. Jang Hae-jun	Park Hae-il
Jung-an	Lee Jung-hyun	-
Soo-wan	Go Kyung-pyo	-
Im Ho-shin	Park Yong-woo	-
Yeon-su	Kim Shin-young	-
Yoo Mi-ji	Jung Yi-seo	-

Review

A beautifully shot crime-mystery with a well of noir elements and a hint of the Hitchcockian. The writer and director is Park Chan-wook, known internationally for Oldboy and the so-called Vengeance trilogy, and his free-flowing stylistic and narrative creativity in here is a testament to a filmmaker at his most privileged and assured, or should I say indulgent. The story revolves around an insomniac detective (Park Hae-il) investigating the suspicious fall and death of a retired immigration officer, which leads to the detective surveilling and soon becoming infatuated with the deceased's beautiful and much younger Chinese wife, Seo-rae (Tang Wei). Her enigmatic personality and motives combined with our protagonist's somewhat sudden and total obsession with her represents the obvious nod to Hitchcock. And while this could have been a sign of quality, Decision to Leave cannot avoid slipping into melodrama and pretentiousness once Park Chan-wook tries to weave this supposedly epic romance into the crime story in order to lift the picture up to a level transcending the sum of its parts. Although the eventual denouement has the contours of greatness, it lacks the substance and resonance it purports to have.