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Puzzle
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (30th July 2008). |
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The Film
 Some movies live and die by the twist, making their name off of the last minute turn or reveal that’s shocking, exhilarating or intriguing to the audience. Pulling off a twist is an art, if the turn is lacking it’s a letdown, if it’s built up too much and is too plain, also disappointing. First time director/writer Kim Tae-Kyung tries to walk the fine line of the twist in “Puzzle” (2006), but lacks a lot of the groundwork and connections required to make it really engaging, and it’s not something that really sticks with you. The story follows a group of 5 criminals hired by a mysterious benefactor to steal some bonds from a bank. The heist goes down well, until the four who were at the bank return to the warehouse to meet their 5th member to contact their boss, and find him burned alive on the floor. The four criminals start to turn against each other, debating to just split up the money and run or wait for their mystery boss to show up. As the debate goes on, there are “Reservoir Dogs” (1992) style flashbacks and backgrounds on each of the criminals, trying to develop an overall story and connection to the characters, building up to the big reveal. When the big reveal happens and the final decisions are made, the writing hasn’t created enough of a connection with the main characters that I fear for any of their survival, I’m just waiting for the twist that I know is about to come. Then the twist comes, leading to the necessary flashbacks to earlier points in the movie attempting to legitimize the reveal, but these aren’t really satisfying. The justification we’re left with comes long after the reveal, making the connections to functionally pull of the twist, but since I haven’t invested in the characters or the story the twist is fairly lackluster. I’m not sure to say if this lack of characterization is a result of the writing by Kim Tae-Kyung or the acting on behalf of the four main criminals, but there’s nothing there to be drawn into. Many of the backgrounds are functional, showing a character trait or connection to the plot to draw the character into the whole robbery plot. The characters are interesting enough to watch and see if they will do anything interesting, but for the most part they’re fairly flat and don’t really rise above the writing and story laid out for them. Visually, the movie is fairly slick, as it should be, but lacks a visual flare to really get me into the story. When the characterization is poor, often flashy yet interesting visuals can be enough to draw me back in to the story and become involved with the film. The title cards before each flashback segment seem fairly out of place and odd, but they aren’t consistently used enough to really justify their inclusion. There are some interesting shots and lighting during the bank robbery, but they’re just clever-enough to keep the movie barely alive and once the twist proves to be a letdown, it’s all over for “Puzzle.” Overall, “Puzzle” tries to follow in the footsteps of other crime/robbery dramas with a big twist and some clever crooks, but falls flat along the way, lacking the charm or power of the movies it’s trying to live up to.
Video
“Puzzle” is presented in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen and the transfer looks good, very little grain, distortion, or interference. The lighting and colors of the movie look good and help to keep the movie going for a little while, but there’s not enough variation to really get the movie up and running. After a bit, a lot off the visual color styles the director uses become bland and make the movie less interesting.
Audio
Presented in Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with English subtitles, the movie sounds good enough. The levels are all in order and the music through the movie helps to keep the tone moving at the right pace and keeps up with the visual and story elements of the film. But the soundtrack stays mostly within the crime-thriller-movie conventions and doesn’t really stand out.
Extras
“Puzzle” offers 3 featurettes as extras that cover most of the production of the movie. Below is a closer look at these extras: First, the “Actor Interviews” featurette runs for 15 minutes and 6 seconds, this spends a good amount of time with each actor covering their character development and their own personal experiences in acting. It’s fairly interesting to watch, but since I already didn’t feel invested in the characters the actor’s explanations really didn’t make me rethink my original opinions of the characters. The “Behind-the-Scenes" featurette runs for 15 minutes and 20 seconds, the director talks about building the idea for the movie and actually talks about “Reservoir Dogs” a fair amount, which I actually appreciated a lot since he basically openly admitted he was trying to make his own version of the same kind of story rather than try to pass it off as his original idea. Finally, the “Making of the Music Score” featurette runs for 12 minutes and 13 seconds. It’s sort of interesting, the composer talks a lot about how the movie is a thriller and how he made the score based off that idea, but gets almost too self-obsessed with his music and his own composing and gives himself a little too much credit for how pivotal his score is to the film.
Overall
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