I love a smart movie, one that keeps you on your toes and constantly guessing as to what is real and what isn’t. Being left in the dark with only glimmers of light here and there to guide the story is what makes films like writers/directors Owen Cho and Kim Sang-hwa’s debut picture, Desire to Kill (Joogigo Sipeun), an engaging and suspenseful one to watch.
Distraught over the death of his wife and now mostly paralyzed from the neck down due to a suicide attempt over her death, Min-ho (Ho-jin Cheon) finds no reason to keep on living and continues to try and take his life. After multiple failed attempts, Min-ho wakes up after his latest attempt to a new bedridden roommate who had just gone through an emergency brain surgery. When the man, named Sang-Up (Yoo Hae-jin), wakes up, unable to move and remember his name, Min-ho soon realizes that this was the man who killed his wife.
Now with a vengeful fire burning in his body, Min-ho has a reason to live and is determined to get stronger before Sang-Up e mentally and physically recovers. After the doctors treat the two with a new medicine, Sang-up begins to make a speedy recovery and now Min-ho is left to race the clock before Sang-up remembers who he is and tries to take him out too.
Set in 1984, Desire to Kill is a grungy, dark and deeply suspenseful film that will delightfully surprise thriller aficionados. What makes it surprising is not necessarily its twists, but because of the limitations of its characters and the strong performances by those who play them. These characters are shaped by its interesting plot, which has a very Hitchcockian feel to it in the way it grips you from the get-go and the way the story unfolds. When the story reaches the point where the characters begin to hallucinate, that’s when everything becomes even more interesting because it becomes difficult to tell what is real and what isn’t which is what keeps you on your toes as the movie progresses towards it’s palm sweating climax. Oh, the film also has something I thought I’d never see, an intense and exciting cripple fight, yeah, no lie.
Though the movie is about revenge and is serious for much of the time, it is also chock full of black comedy due of the limited amount of physical mobility t
he leads have. This results in some pretty entertaining verbal arguments and hilarious attempts at killing each other through cleverly devised attack plans. Even if the film starts off with a few remarks from the director saying it was actually a funny movie, I didn’t really believe it, but as the film progressed I ended up laughing a lot more than I thought I would. The directing duo did a great job of infusing the humor into the script while not allowing it to detract from the serious and depressing revenge story they’ve built up.
Some have compared Desire to Kill to Oldboy except based in a hospital room. I originally disagreed for the simple fact that Oldboy blew me away, but after carefully reflecting upon the film there are a handful of striking similarities that cannot be ignored, most notably in the pacing, plot structure and its genre, a psychology thriller of sorts. Much like in Oldboy, you are only given one side of the story for so long but when the other side is revealed it will start to mess with your mind until the film’s trump card is actually played and you sit there with a stupid grin thinking to yourself, well done Korea, well done.
Though there are a couple of issues with the movie, namely how our leads manage to standup during a fight, Desire to Kill ends up being a movie that’s completely worth hunting down and is a must-see for Korean revenge thriller fans.
Rating: A riveting, gritty and unique take on revenge thrillers (7.3/10)
For those that pick up the DVD, it comes with two special features:
- Interviews with the Director and Cast
- Trailer collection
Desire to Kill is now available on DVD in the UK from Terracotta Distribution, fingers crossed that someone picks it up for a release here in the states
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