Direction: Hirokazu Koreeda
Country: South Korea
Following a first international production in 2019 with the charming French drama The Truth, the highly celebrated Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (Nobody Knows, 2004; Shoplifters, 2018) decided to shoot his next film in South Korea. Broker mixes conscious drama and light comedy, starring the acclaimed Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder, 2003; Parasite, 2019), the unsung Gang Dong-won (Peninsula, 2020), and the popular singer/songwriter Lee Ji-eun.
The themes of family, abandonment, and adoption suit Koreeda once again, but this time around, the narrative is pelted with problems that range from a sleep-inducing tone to an often unexciting course of events. The plot, pointing out the controversial baby boxes where mothers can drop their infants to be adopted, ends up in a life-changing road trip that unites a dissatisfied young mother (Ji-eun) with the two men - laundromat owner Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho) and formerly rejected child Dong-soo (Dong-won) - that illegally plan to make a good sum with the selling of her child.
Never heart-wrenching, Broker is mounted with simplicity but not enough wit and grit to make our day. The detective side of the story is clumsy; it simply doesn’t work, no matter how many turns the plot can give. On the emotional side, the film only impressed me once, in a strong scene on the Ferris wheel that felt like a short rebirth of Koreeda’s best dramatic qualities. There are some innocent moments of humor that don’t save the film from its graceless staging.
Despite glimpses of a hard-earned affection, Koreeda’s road movie is a soulless exercise that sinks the cast in a dry land of forced, melodramatic resolutions. This is particularly obvious for Kang-ho, whose acting capabilities deserve more credibility than what is showed in this flat performance.
