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Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: March 11, 2014
Director: Hong-soo Park
Cast: Seung Hyun Choi, Ye-ri Han, Ho-bin Jeong
Year: 2013
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The Movie:
Commitment begins in 2009, as a man operating as a North Korean spy is discovered and killed by South Korean military police in Seoul. After being branded a traitor by his government, the man's children, a son and a daughter, are sent to a forced labor camp to pay for their father's failure. His son, Myung-hoon (Seung Hyun Choi aka T.O.P.), is taken from his prison cell at gunpoint and told that if serves the North as a secret agent, he and his sister will be free to leave the prison camp. Fast forward to 2011, and Myung-hoon is now working as a spy and living under a fake name as Kang Dae-ho in Seoul. As a front, Dae-ho is set up with a pair of foster parents who are also working for the North. Meanwhile, someone else in the South is killing North Korean agents who are loyal to Kim Jong-Il, the dying leader of the communist state. Soon, Dae-ho receives his orders via a cellphone delivered to him, and learns that his mission is to find the assassin responsible for the recent killings. However, just when you think that Commitment is going to be an espionage thriller, Dae-ho learns that he has to attend high-school in order to maintain his cover identity.
From this point on, Commitment alternates between being an espionage thriller and a high-school drama that later turns into a romantic melodrama (sort-of). Dae-ho is immediately picked on by bullies at school, but then stands up for the shy girl in class, Lee Hye-in (Ye-ri Han), who shares the same name as his sister, Ri Hye-in (Yoo-Jeong Kim). Yes, it's a little confusing. More on that later. We are shown that after school how Dae-ho does his “homework:†by tracking down informants who have information about the assassin and then ruthlessly killing them once he gets what he needs from them. Back at school, Dae-ho ends up fighting a group of bullies who try to steal Hye-in's money, and from that point on she begins to trust him. Hye-in wants to become a dancer, and ends up leaving school, leaving Dae-ho to focus on his mission. However, it soon becomes apparent that the man responsible for the deaths of the North Korean agents is working for a rival faction within the communist Party. Like the confusing names of Lee Hye-in and Ri Hye-in, the rival factions are unhelpfully named Unit 8 and Section 35. Good luck trying to remember which is which, not that it really matters. Ultimately, once Kim Jong-Il dies, Dae-ho is marked for death by the agents of Section 35, who have seized power in the North.
The action in Commitment comes surprisingly fast and hard, and despite his Korean boy band roots Seung Hyun Choi is unflinching and vicious during the action scenes. Choi looks like a pop-star, but unless you mind your action heroes occasionally wearing eyeliner, he fits the role of a teenage assassin fairly well. Despite being fairly well-shot and choreographed though, the action is sparse throughout. There isn't very much in the way of hand-to-hand combat or gunplay, most of the violence occurs offscreen (although some blood is shown afterwards), and the only real action setpiece occurs at the very end of the movie. Although it does include a huge warehouse explosion and not one, but two Mexican standoffs, so it has that going for it.
Commitment immediately takes a turn towards melodrama when a friendship develops between Dae-ho and Hye-in. Or is it a romance? It's never very clear. The movie has the beats of a tragic romance, but there's also the weird “you have the same name as my sister†thing and there's never so much as a kiss shared between the two leads. Either way, despite the romance/friendship being very tame and unrequited it actually doesn't feel out of place. The film balances the romance and espionage plots pretty well, it moves at a quick pace, and never feels like it's sacrificing one part of the story for the other. Though one aspect that may frustrate some viewers is that we never learn how Dae-ho became such an expert and skilled assassin despite never receiving any training.
There aren't many twists, it's light on action, and the plot is fairly predictable, but Commitment is well executed and the political setting makes it more interesting than other films of its kind. The “brother will do anything to save his sister†plot that is the main focus of the drama might not play as well with Western audiences, but it works within the context of the North-South Korean separation. Overall, Commitment is worth a watch if you adjust your expectations and view it more as a character drama with a political message about the human cost of the North-South separation than as an espionage thriller.
Audio/Video/Extras
Commitment is presented in 2.39:1 on a 25GB single-layer Blu-ray disc. The picture quality of this MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer is pretty good overall. There doesn't appear to be any evidence of compression artifacts, and close-up shots feature a fine level of detail. Night sequences and darker indoor scenes tend to look monochromatic with a cold blue color palette, but the blacks aren't crushed and shadow detail is well-defined. Yellows, oranges and reds really stand out in contrast to the steel grey and blue in these scenes. Commitment has a very vibrant and brightly defined colour palette and is a well shot, well made film in spite of its smaller budget.
Audio options are limited to Korean 5.1 DTS HDMA and Korean 2.0 Stereo tracks with English subtitles. The 5.1 DTS audio is somewhat disappointing in comparison to the film's video presentation. Dialogue, background and ambient sounds mostly come out of the center channel, while gunshots and the score come in very loud through the subwoofer and rear channels. Overall the 5.1 is very flat, and the contrast in sound between the centre channel and booming gunshots is somewhat jarring and will have you reaching for your remote to change the volume or turn down your bass settings. The English subtitles were easy to read and appeared to be free of errors.
Bonus features include a brief Making Of featurette and previews for other Well Go USA releases. The ten-minute making of featurette focuses opens with Seung Hyun Choi discussing the plot of the film and the motivations of his character, and then moves into some behind the scenes footage. There isn't any connecting theme or narrative thread to the making of featurette and once Choi is done talking it becomes just a behind the scenes footage reel.
The Final Word
It's not quite as action packed as some might hope, but Commitment manages to deliver a thrilling and dramatic story in a satisfying if small-scale package that should appeal to fans of Korean cinema.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
