Fabricated City

Kwon Yoo is unemployed and spends his days in a multiplayer war game, where he leads a team. One day, after losing his phone, the police arrive: he is charged with a murder. All the evidence points at him and there is even a confession video. He goes to prison. After escaping, the only people who can help him are his teammates from the game. The subject is not crime but evidence being manufacturable. Nobody in the film is looking for the truth; they take a prepared file and confirm it. To prove his innocence, Kwon Yoo has to reconstruct the scene that was built around him. The form feeds on game aesthetics: planning over a map, team roles, fast cutting. The escapes and fights are deliberately overblown. The production is one of the few to take the pervasiveness of online gaming culture in Korea as direct material; the team members have never met in life and the film takes that relationship seriously. Ji Chang-wook leads and Shim Eun-kyung plays the team's housebound hacker. Park Kwang-hyun directs. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean action thrillers and conspiracy plots. Who it is not for: anyone wanting realism; the plot deliberately skips its own logic in places to keep moving.