Decision to Leave

Based on the pacing and acting, this should be a top-tier movie, but I found it difficult to watch because of the cruddy subtitles I had.

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"Decision to Leave is far from Park Chan-wook's best works, but it's still an intriguing, layered story about obsession and "forbidden love".

It captures the viewer's full attention during the engaging first part, where the central theme and the respective romance appear to be in sync. However, momentum is lost with the repetitive, lengthy second half in which the same narrative points are approached without the same impact.

Surprising humor provides a good balance, but it strangely ceases to be used after a certain point."

Rating: B-

When a man is found at the base of a mountain with his skull crushed, it looks like he slipped, or did he commit suicide, or was he pushed? Well it falls to detectives "Jang Hae-joon" (Park Hae-il) and his young sidekick "Soo-wan" (Go Kyung-Po) to get to the bottom of it. They are suspicious enough, but the only realistic suspect is his younger widow "Song Seo-rae" (Tang Wei) - but she has an alibi. She looks after ageing grannies and they swear that she is the milk of human kindness. Gradually, the older policeman begins to obsess a little about her. He stakes out her apartment at all hours, follows her - and she knows it too. Is she playing with him? Toying with him? Skip forwards a few years and he and his wife are in a market where they...

Decision to leave looks great. The way the camera moves, the layout of the scenes and the staging of it all, great. But, its a bit plodding, and I didn't quite understand the character motivations. I partly wonder if im at a loss of understanding the korean/chinese ethno-nationalist relationship, since it seemed to play into it all, but overall I didn't see what was so overwhelming about the Chinese girl that the Korean detective was obsessing over.