Director: Jung-Ho Lee
Distributor: Cinéart
Duration: 130 minutes
The Beast (Biseuteo) (VOD) – Movie Review
The Korean hype is quite real nowadays. We are being bombarded by K-pop, in particular, the soothing tunes of BTS and some may still remember PSY’s Gangnam Style. Other than the somewhat iconic sounds of their upbeat music, we also see a huge assortment of Korean series on streaming services such as Netflix. It’s unsurprising to also see big hitters in the movie industry that come from South-Korea. This time we are taking a look at Biseuteo, a detective story of a murder that shook the foundation of South-Korea. We were intrigued by the very dark and grim trailer, and were lucky enough to get a viewing of the VOD version of the film.
The movie starts with the disappearance of a 17-year-old girl that has shocked the nation. Not only is the disappearance disturbing, but the police also have no leads and are getting a lot of backlash from the general population. Nonetheless, when a body is discovered, two detectives from different teams will have to work together. Jeong Han Soo (Sung-min Lee) is a strange captain that doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. While you wouldn’t immediately call him corrupt, there’s something off in how he handles certain parts of cases. His ex-partner Han Min Tae (Jae-myung Yoo) is the captain of the other division, and has his sights set on a promotion, as the current commissioner will probably receive his own promotion after the case is solved, clearing the way to his old spot.
Biseuteo quickly becomes a very dangerous game of cat and mouse, where certain rules will have to be broken to find the alleged killer of the young girl. First, a priest with certain perverted traits gets booked by Jeong, but Han doesn’t want Jeong to get all the attention, and quickly finds something to let the priest go. Jeong then gets dragged into a situation where one of his old informants commits a very violent crime, but promises to hand him the killer in exchange for an alibi.
The flow of the movie is rather normal for a dark crime movie, as a lot is going on, and a lot of information has to be given to the viewer as well. You’ll be treated to some brutal scenes, not always explicitly showing what is going on, but certainly more than suggestive enough for it to crawl under your skin. The movie’s topic is a gruesome one, and the creators didn’t shy away from showing this in the film’s atmosphere. There is one moment, however, around the halfway mark of the movie that it feels like the case is solved and that there is seemingly no big reason for things to drag on. The movie quickly corrects this to create an interesting second half. Other than that, action and information alternate rapidly enough to keep you in suspense throughout the movie.
Acting performances in this captivating thriller are superbly handled. You’ll have the two main actors, Sung-min Lee and Jae-myung Yoo, who play complete opposites in this movie. That being said, this film has a lot of cast members that are of relative importance. You’ll have a lot of the detectives that contribute to the whole, as well as certain informants, evil characters and so on. It feels a lot more elaborate than many Hollywood movies that solely zoom in on a few characters, with a few side-characters getting mere minutes in the limelight. The performances feel great as a whole, and everything is well-crafted.
As we viewed the VOD version, we can only speculate on what extras a physical copy would bring to the table. Nonetheless, the movie stands quite tall on itself, and there are no real open gaps that need extra explaining. Perhaps a little more history between the two main characters would have been nice, but this is something that should be in the movie, rather than a special features section.
Conclusion
The Beast is a proper name for this somewhat gritty and dark movie that revolves around a brutal psychopathic murderer. The tone is properly set mere moments into the movie, and the acting performances are simply top-notch. While we lost our way a bit during the halfway mark of the movie, as we felt the film reached a certain conclusion then, the movie surprised us and directed us towards the edge of our seat once more. Even those that are not used to watching foreign crime movies will certainly get a kick out of this one.
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