Movie Review Burning

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2018 – Spoiler Alerts – Directed by Lee Chang-dong The fourth movie in this year’s Worldwise Learning Centre Preston International Film Festival Screenings is this South Korean crime drama. Yoo Ah-in stars as Lee Jong-su, a young dreamer with plans to be a writer. He is stuck in dead-end part time work, and looking after his jailed father’s failing farmstead. One day he meets and falls in love with a girl from his childhood, Shin Hae-mi, played by Jeon Jong-seo. When she goes away for a temporary assignment on a charity project in Africa for a few months she invites Jong-su to look after her cat for her. Though he knows the cat eats food and uses its litter tray Jong-su never actually sees the cat, called Boil. When Hae-mi returns to Seoul she arrives with a new boyfriend she met on the trip, a man called Ben (played by Steven Yeun, best known for his role as Glenn in The Walking Dead TV zombie series. Ben is older, wiser, and funnier than Jong-su, cooks well, and drives a Porsche, though he never says how he makes his money. Ben tells Jong-su that he has a strange hobby for burning down people’s greenhouses and that he plans to destroy one close to Jong-su’s home. Knowing the locations of the greenhouses in the area Jong-su finds no trace of any having burnt down, but Hae-Mi is suddenly missing, not answering calls and no longer at her home. Jong-su follows Ben around, finding some of Hae-Mi’s belongings in his home and that a cat Ben has suddenly taken in answers to the name Boil, making it likely to be the cat owned by Hae-Mi, but never seen by Jong-su. Is Ben a killer? Has he actually killed Hae-mi, or burnt down any properties? The film actually purposely avoids giving direct answers to the various mysterious threads and questions raised as Jong-su moves towards a dangerous confrontation with Ben. Intriguing, tense and well-acted, a movie that will keep you guessing up to and beyond its thrilling final moments. Just don’t expect to get easy answers as to just what on Earth is really going on. Arthur Chappell