The story takes place in the 1980s in South Korea. During the difficult and hopeful days of the transition to democracy, there are too many stories to tell. People's efforts and failures, bravery and timidity, every tiny life experience in this process can be It was thrilling to be told. Song Youshuo, the actor played by Song Kanghao, resigned from his position as a judge and decided to open a law firm in Busan, trying to make money. He saw the oil and water in the real estate registration field. He printed his business cards and circulated them everywhere, but he was dismissed by his fellow lawyers who advertised himself as the elite of society. However, he really made his first pot of gold. Let his wife and children move out of a house with unstable water pressure and rats running on the roof. Then, he expanded his business to the tax field and continued to expand his business. This is the life he wants, a dignified income and a stable family life. Otherwise, there is no ambition. This is related to his origin. Many years ago, he was still working at a construction site. When his son was born, he could not even afford the hospital expenses. He worked hard on his own law and finally changed his destiny. Money is a shortcut for him to prove himself.
"The Defender" is a typical two-stage structure. Song Youshuo in the first half of the film is a standard petty citizen who only cares about making money. Students of public interest, politics, ideas, and demonstrations, all of which seem to him to be remote and ridiculous. In the second half, he has become a civil rights leader, even if he is behind bars, he still has to petition for the people. And what prompted him to change was a small thing. When he was poor, he owed money to a restaurant. After many years, he returned to the restaurant, apologized to the proprietress, and became a mother-child relationship. And the son of the proprietress who is going to college was identified by the authorities as a "red element" for attending a reading club. He was detained secretly and tortured to extract a confession on the grounds of national security. Song Youshuo, who had always thought that the students were fooling around, felt the absurdity of the situation. He gave up the tax case that could make money and took over the civil rights case. From this, I gradually see the truth behind power politics in the name of patriotism and the need to fight for democracy.
This is the kind of film that is extremely easy to turn the protagonist into a saint, but the good thing about "The Defender" is that it uses a most marginal character and a most inadvertent trivial thing to double the direction of the whole story, which makes the protagonist Song Youshuo's The change in mentality appears smooth and reasonable. The movie did not endow Song Youshuo with "God personality", nor did it give him the spirit of giving up his life for justice. Song Youshuo has always been defending his own interests or the interests of people close to him. Objectively, his efforts have promoted civil rights in the general sense. Although the court scenes in the second half of the film are inevitably patterned, the confrontation with the secret police in court and under the special background, people's efforts to restrict power through the law still appear to be moving.
Korean movies have brought more and more surprises to people. In addition to Hong Sang-soo's literary and artistic style, not mentioning the strength of Lee Cangdong and Park Chan-wook, and setting aside Kim Ki-duk's experiments in exploring extreme humanity, South Korea has already made its own way as far as mainstream movies are concerned. Keeping close to social reality, carefully reflecting on history, not covering up human weakness, and not covering up historical stains, are enough to make Korean movies in recent years. Whether "Broken Arrow", "Melting Pot" or "Berlin", they all follow history or reality and give a beautiful story. If Korean drama is a closed loop of dream-making that has nothing to do with reality and has a self-consistent logic, then Korean movies have created another possibility in a territory closer to reality. South Korea's film and vision have also achieved unprecedented success in completely different directions.
Compared with the increasingly clear path of Korean films, Chinese films seem to be difficult to evaluate. This "The Defender", which reflects South Korea’s democratic transition, became the ninth local movie in South Korea’s history with more than 10 million viewers. Just the day after it was released, China also released a new film with a box office of hundreds of millions. It's called "Private Order."
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