Review Of Korean Movie Broker – An Impactful Family Drama

Director : Kore -Eda-Hirokazu

Star Cast : Song Kang Ho , Gang Dong Wong , Lee Ji Eun , Lee Joo Young Doona Bae

Storyline :The story revolves around  Ha Sang-hyeon (Parasite star Song Kang-ho), a dry cleaner who has begun slowly working off his debt to a mobster by stealing babies who are left in South Korea’s baby boxes and then brokering their unofficial adoptions. Helping him in his endeavor is Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), an orphan who works at the very church where Sang-hyeon’s go-to baby box is located. Together, the two men have made a lucrative business out of selecting new families for the abandoned children they find.

Their illegal side hustle is threatened, however, when Moon So-young (Lee Ji-eun), the mother of a baby that Sang-hyeon and Dong-soo kidnapped in the middle of the night, comes looking for her son the next day. Rather than notifying the police about Sang-hyeon and Dong-soo’s brokering, So-young decides to travel across South Korea and help them find a new home for her son. The journey that follows is one that, in typical , forces So-young, Sang-hyeon, and Dong-soo to reexamine their views on family, love, and the bonds that connect them. There are various sub plots that forms the crux of the movie revealing that there is nothing high then family love and bonding.

Technical Review :Broker,  is so well-calibrated and innocuously presented that you don’t realize just how layered it is until you’re already so submerged in its world and story that any questions about the film’s logic are rendered meaningless by the emotional weight of it.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s writing and direction is  impeccable .HonKyung-pyo’s cinematography is beautiful. 

The first half is slow bur second half catches up , though several plot twists that nearly break the film’s tender logic

Performances : Both Lee and Gang shine in their roles as So-young and Dong-soo. The pair portray their respective characters’ internal turmoil and conflicts without ever overdoing it or bringing them too far above the surface.

Song Kang-ho, meanwhile, turns in yet another quietly revelatory performance as Sang-hyeon, a man whose overly practical personality perfectly masks the rough-edged kindness that stirs within him

Final Words : Its a beautiful Korean Family Movie , A good weekend watch.

Ratings :3.5*/5*

Watch the trailer here :