“Traffickers” Korean Theatrical Poster
AKA: Traffikers
Director: Kim Hong-Sun
Producer: Won Hyun-Jae
Cast: Im Chang-Jung, Daniel Choi, Jo Yoon-Hee, Oh Dal-Su, Jo Dal-Hwan, Jung Ji-Yoon
Running Time: 111 min.
By Kelly Warner
They say that truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense. What they left out is that films based on a true story also have to make sense, regardless of whether that ruins the truthiness of the tale (my spellcheck didn’t even blink at the word ‘truthiness’ – a sign of the coming Apocalypse, I’m sure). To make a true story more understandable or presentable, it’s not uncommon to add a bit of dramatization. I’m not going to pretend to be familiar with the true story that inspired the film Traffickers, however I feel it’s pretty safe to assume that writer/director Hong-seon Kim and co. added their fair share of fictional drama to the story. What’s interesting is that they managed to put much of this theatrical drama in all the wrong places. I’d bet the headlines that detailed the true account were already difficult to believe, but all the filmmakers did was make the pill even harder to swallow.
The film is about organ traffickers. A young woman named Yoo-ri (played by Yun-hie Jo) is trying to save her father but the hospitals aren’t helping, so she turns to the black market. She’s told to take a boat to China where her father’s new organs will be waiting for him and doctors will be prepped for surgery. Meanwhile, on the same boat ride, the organ traffickers abduct a woman in a wheelchair and bring her to a vacant sauna to remove her organs.
There are so many twists along the way, most of which seemed rather absurd, so describing anymore of the plot would be a wasted effort. In many ways, that’s what the whole film feels like: a wasted effort. There are good performances here, there’s a nasty backbone for a story, and a few interesting new ideas, but it all amounts to so very little.
This is the sort of the film that says, Here, this is our plot, but don’t get too attached because it’s gonna change in a couple minutes anyway. A new, improbable twist is added every five or ten minutes. Instead of making the film complex it only manages to make things confusing and/or silly. Some twists just do not work and one wishes director Kim had played it straight and made a gritty thriller instead of… whatever this is.
It would help if there was a single character that I felt something for. Yoo-ri, the woman who’s trying to save her father, knows she’s doing something wrong but she only cares about her father’s life and not the victim. I can’t exactly root for her. I expect the film wants us to get behind the leader of the organ traffickers Young-gyu (played by Chang Jung Lim, who gives a strong performance). Before the end of the film Young-gyu does his best to do the right things, but his chosen profession still makes him a horrible human being. Even if we can get beyond the fact that Young-gyu regularly smuggles organs and other contraband, his personal life is also bothersome. In one of the film’s more puzzling sub-plots, Young-gyu is in love with Yoo-ri. But it’s not a casual attraction – he’s basically her stalker. Because she smiled at him, he assumes she’s leading him on. What’s more, when she repeatedly tells him to buzz off, he gets angry and demands an apology, one she repeatedly feels she has to give. Ugly, stupid people.
Dal-su Oh plays one of the film’s most despicable characters, the doctor whose job it is to extract the organs from the team’s victims. Despite how repulsive the surgeon is, I found he was the closest thing to a complete character in the movie. He’s a monster, but he knows he’s a monster, and the film doesn’t expect you to think he’s anything more. It’s the only true character in the whole film and another good performance from a talented actor.
There is a sequence in the film where Yoo-ri is on the boat and finds herself unknowingly helping the husband of the woman who’s been abducted search for his lost wife. However contrived that sounds, it’s actually the closest the movie comes to having some real tension. Yoo-ri wants to save her father and she also wants to save this woman and she doesn’t know that one could cancel out the other. Instead of mining the sequence for all it’s worth the filmmakers allow it to fizzle out before the suspense ever really kicks in.
This is a movie that repeatedly fails to recognize the potential in its own ideas and jumps onto the next one before finishing with the last one. Wasted potential… and a waste of time.
Kelly Warner’s Rating: 3/10
