Broker - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

Since virtually the birth of cinema, artists the world over have sought to expand our minds and share differing points of view on the most delicate, sensitive and even heinous topics. Human trafficking is one of those kinds of topics, something we can pretty much all agree is a fairly despicable and in most cases illegal activity, but there’s always another take on the matter. Broker is a new film that works at humanizing aspects of human trafficking, it comes to us from writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda, the same man that brought us Shoplifters, a Best Foreign Language Film nominee from 2019. While there are flat out immoral avenues of smuggling humans, there are also ways of transferring human beings, via adoption agencies and orphanages, that serve a perfectly normal and useful place in human society. With Broker, Koreeda threads the needle and stitches a patch right in the middle of these two concepts, and we get to go along for the somewhat controversial ride and ultimately decide for ourselves where the morality line gets drawn. These characters are wonderfully fleshed out and we get an amazing sense of the entire cast that’s been assembled, but in the end, when the film really goes for the emotional jugular, some of the drama felt a bit forced just for the sake of trying to make the audience weep profusely. This is a thought provoking and moving film that cinephiles are bound to love, and while general audiences may not love it quite as much, there’s enough great qualities here to make this an easy deal that anyone can Broker.

SYNOPSIS - We begin this tale of lost children in the middle of a rainy night, in a city somewhere in South Korea. As the camera lingers on angles of the city, we begin to witness an individual wearing a dark hoodie or rain jacket, they cross through portions of the alleys that our vantage point makes us privy to, climbing up a staircase and eventually reaching a carport. After being shrouded in shadows through her walk, she stands in the harsh fluorescent lighting for a moment, then produces an infant from under her garments and lays the child on the ground in front of a drop box of sorts built into the wall. Two women detectives, Soo-jin (Bae Doona) and Lee (Lee Jojo-young) sit in a car and observe this disconcerting transaction, after the mother has left the baby on the ground, one of the women goes over and picks up the child, pulls the handle to open the box and places it inside. Next we see Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho) dressed as a type of priest and a friend of his, Dong-soo (Dong Won-gang), retrieving the child from inside the bin. After they read a note stating the mother intends to come back for the infant, they delete the facilities video file of them collecting the child. The pair load up and set out in the middle of the rainy night with the infant in an old bluish-gray van that serves as a visual centerpiece for the film, much in the vein of how Drive My Car utilized a red Saab.

Thus begins this voyage into the wide world of selling human beings, the film primarily stays with our main characters, but the screenplay introduces us to new ones as we go. The baby’s mother So-young (Ji-eun Lee) is finally is able to catch up with the trio and joins the party on their crusade to find the baby a new family, albeit to the highest bidder. Then an orphan boy smuggles himself into their van and after traveling far away from his orphanage, they decide to let him come along on their quest. The cast is really special and the screenplay really gives so many of these characters legs to run on, especially Song Kang-ho and Don Won-gang, but even Ji-eun Lee has some amazing scenes and the entire ensemble cast delivers impressive performances. All along the way the screenplay expertly weaves in and out of the intricacies that would naturally flood a story about two men who sell babies and a single mother along for the ride as they go about finding the child a home. Unfortunately the screenplay pushed too far into the melodrama territory for my taste, there were a couple aspects that didn’t sit well with me. But eventually the film winds it’s way to the finale that, while impactful and thought provoking, is also a bit underwhelming in it’s delivery and also in it’s ability to give satisfying conclusions to these characters we’ve come to care about.

Broker starts out slow but becomes increasingly cinematic as it goes. There were back to back sequences, one of neon lights flashing on a rooftop, illuminating the characters faces in different colors. It was immediately followed by a shot of a woman having a conversation in the passenger seat of a car while it’s raining, the camera slowing panning in on her from outside, these blew me away and I ended up very positive on “the look” of the film. Even if Broker didn’t carry that level of incredible camera work through it’s entirety, it certainly has it’s moments of flair. I’ve already commented on the excellent acting as well as the work of writer/director Koreeda, most everything he’s doing is really good to excellent, with a few minor points of the screenplay I had issue with. While the screenplay of intricacies and well developed characters was one of the film’s highlights, some of the drama seemed artificial. There was a subplot with some thugs that the main protagonists know that didn’t really add anything or lead anywhere, also a sequence where Song Kang-ho’s meets up with his daughter, I felt this was only inserted into the film in an effort to make me cry, which I didn’t. I already mentioned the issues with the finale, which also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. While the runtime for the film pushes past the two hour mark, I felt that although slower paced than most other films, my interest never waned, however the gentleman next to me fell asleep. Ultimately all the extra time we spend building all these wonderful characters that really adds layers and depth to the film will get the endorsement of most critics, but the payoff just won’t quite be there for some general audiences.

SUMMARY - Broker has a lot going for it, even with the foreign language barrier that sends some general audiences running for the hills, but there’s a lot to love here, especially for cinephiles and movie lovers. It might stretch a bit in terms of all the drama it tries to sell it’s audience, but for those that buy it, it’s hard to not go all in and go for broke with Broker.