The Berlin File

A spy film set in Berlin. An arms deal is being made. A North Korean agent is brokering it and the meeting is raided. Jong-seong is that agent. He escapes, but the incident starts an inquiry in Pyongyang; someone is thought to have leaked. His wife is an interpreter at the embassy. Her name comes up in the same inquiry and the two begin to suspect each other. A cleaner arrives from Pyongyang. Dong Myung-soo is assigned to close the file and leaves nobody outside it. At the same time an officer from South Korean intelligence is watching. Jin-soo has trouble with his own headquarters as well. From there the film is a chase. An apartment block, a roof, a hotel room, a metro and a field. What the narrative is interested in is not ideology but being used: all four sides have their own headquarters and none of them protects its own man; the film shows that again and again. The line between husband and wife is the real matter. Neither knows whether the other is genuinely an agent, and they cannot talk. The fights are close and short. In keeping with the Korean action tradition the contact is hard and the choreography is far from showy. It was shot in Berlin and in Latvia. Ha Jung-woo, Han Suk-kyu, Ryoo Seung-bum and Gianna Jun are in the cast. Ryoo Seung-wan wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes cold, realistic spy films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a plot that is easy to follow; the first half hour is a downpour of agencies and names.