Review: I think Broker works in its smaller moments, but I was a bit unmoved by the movie’s grander gestures. Hirokazu Kore-eda doesn’t strive too much to hit on new themes of makeshift families and the innate desire for human connection, and he’s achieved this to a much finer extent in previous movies.
Hirokazu Kore-eda is so in his bag with Broker, which feels so in-tune with many of the esteemed director’s previous releases that it almost feels as if someone is riffing on all the staple features – broken families, soft shot selection, and a melancholic score that slowly wraps its arms around.
But, for better and fore worse, Broker is just that: a movie trying so hard to fit inside the Hirokazu Kore-eda mold that it ultimately comes off a bit flat. There are scenes that drive home the tone and emotional responsiveness that you’d hope for, mostly supplied by the empathetic performances of its leads (led by Song Kang-ho as the ringleader of an illegal adoption broker desperately needing the money to pay off debts to a local gang).
Outside of that, there are some storytelling choices that feel odd in the grand scheme of a movie attempting to balance emotion and moral consequences. There’s a framing narrative to Broker, where a team of female detectives (played by Bae Doona and Lee Joo-young) follow the adoption mediaries to catch them in the act and charge them. This often pulls you out of the rhythm of a story that’s much more emotional and inflicting, impactful and substantial.
Instead, Broker comes off as a bit of a mixed bag. It’s a tad too long and doesn’t dig as far into the themes that populate many of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s movies. In the midst of a run of films that includes Shoplifters and Monster, this feels like the branch between the two that never fully commits to either. It isn’t as hopeful towards a set of criminals like Shoplifters, and it isn’t as acidic and pessimistic of human compassion as Monster.
The road trip narrative design both helps and hinders Broker. It’s nice to see Kore-eda effectively move between areas of South Korean cities; his eye for specific framing and design is apparent throughout. But it also seems like the movie is constantly working to get to the next point. It rarely stops to focus. When it does, the movie is stellar (like the scenes as simple as Kang-ho and Gang Dong-won kicking a can around while drunkenly discussing their past mistakes, or Dong-won and Lee Ji-eun at the top of a Ferris wheel) – but it’s few and far between.
I think Broker works in its smaller moments, but I was a bit unmoved by its grander gestures. Hirokazu Kore-eda doesn’t strive too much to hit on new themes of makeshift families and the innate desire for human connection, and he’s achieved this to a much finer extent in previous movies. He’s playing all the hits, only they hit much quieter this time around.
Score: 6/10
- Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona, Lee Ji-eun
- Crew: Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hong Kyung-pyo, Jung Jae-il
- Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
- Runtime: 129 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: December 26, 2022
- Read about Broker (2022) on Wikipedia and IMDb
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