Overall Score
Rating Summary
This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
Before Bong Joon-Ho made history with his Best Picture winning magnum opus Parasite in 2019, Park Chan-Wook put the South Korean film industry on the worldwide map with classics such as Oldboy and more recently, The Handmaiden. After a six-year hiatus, Park Chan-Wook is back with another spectacular addition to his impressive filmography. Decision to Leave stars Park Hae-il as Hae-jun, an experienced but impressionable detective who falls for a mysterious widow named Seo-rae (Tang Wei), after she becomes one of the prime suspects in his latest murder investigation.
Decision to Leave is uncharacteristically restrained for Park Chan-Wook, who is known for his maximalist, often perversely violent style. While it contains flashy editing and Park’s wickedly funny sense of humor throughout, the film is a precisely crafted puzzle that takes its time to reach an unexpected, yet fascinating conclusion. Park makes sure not to reveal too much early on and keeps audiences in the dark for most of the runtime, so they can have the pleasure of solving the mystery alongside the protagonist.
Park Chan-Wook’s films have always been expertly edited, and Decision to Leave is no exception. The film utilizes editing techniques to let its story unfold in an unconventional fashion. The protagonist’s thought process as he attempts to solve the murder case is often visualized for the audience to see, which was a unique element that made the mystery even more thrilling. Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, meanwhile, have natural chemistry as their relationship unfolds in a way that is fascinating to watch.
The final act of Decision to Leave is dizzying in its execution and can feel somewhat convoluted and does overstay its running time, clocking in at over 2 hours, although it does reach an extremely satisfying conclusion that ties it together in an unexpected fashion. Unlike Park’s previous work, the film requires patience, but audiences who decide to let the film wash over them will undoubtedly be rewarded.
In the end, Decision to Leave is an outlier in Park Chan-Wook’s filmography from a stylistic standpoint, but will likely be revered as one of his best films to date.
still courtesy of Mongrel Media
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