When first encountering the title Assassins, most audiences would naturally picture a flashy action thriller featuring cold-blooded killers eliminating targets from the dark shadows. However, the actual film diverges significantly from widespread expectations and the genre nuances the title implies. Rather than a purely entertaining action flick with splattering blood and hailing bullets, it is much closer to a heavy, serious historical drama and political thriller that thoroughly dissects one of the most shocking incidents in modern South Korean history. And precisely for that reason, it is a work destined to inevitably stand at the center of fierce controversy.
Looking at examples from both Korea and abroad, works that bring real historical figures or sensitive events of modern history to the screen are always engulfed in fierce debates and controversies upon release. Unless it is ancient history from the distant past, modern history inevitably involves individuals directly or indirectly connected to the events who are still alive, or their descendants who are actively living across various levels of society. If the film were to dryly list only the irrefutable truths already clearly recorded in history textbooks, there would be no room for controversy. However, if a commercial film, rather than a documentary, merely repeats obvious and known facts, the narrative becomes tedious, and the audience quickly loses interest.
For a commercial film to succeed at the box office and capture the public's attention, it must throw a powerful question mark into the audience's minds: "Was history really like that?" In truth, it is rare for all facts of any historical era to be perfectly uncovered, and behind massive events, there are always mysteries and gaps in interpretation where the absolute truth remains unknown. Creators squeeze into these unrecorded voids of history, painting over them with their own imagination and intriguing conspiracy theories to weave a captivating narrative. As the controversy grows fiercer, the public becomes even more curious about the film, leading to a phenomenon where audiences actively search for historical facts after watching, enjoying a kind of intellectual amusement.
From that perspective, whether Director Hur Jin-ho's original intention was cinematic entertainment or historical re-evaluation, he has perfectly succeeded in at least gathering the public's burning attention. Currently, in various internet communities and film review sites, intense debates are raging fiercely over the truth and the mastermind behind the assassination of the First Lady depicted in the film. Yet, it is difficult to criticize Director Hur for fabricating completely absurd fiction from start to finish. The film clearly presents to the audience, through subtitles and archival footage at the end, that the major events depicted are deeply rooted in actual historical records.
The series of events appearing in the film are painful fragments of real modern South Korean history, the reality of which audiences can quickly confirm with just a few searches on their smartphones. Because such intense real events are cleverly intertwined within a fictional narrative, viewers cannot help but fall into confusion, wondering where the facts end and where the fiction begins regarding the breathtaking conspiracies they just witnessed on screen. This historical faction (fact + fiction) genre is a writing technique frequently borrowed in Hollywood movies, such as the film JFK dealing with the Kennedy assassination. Even if audiences do not deeply understand the complex political history of the United States, they are swept away by the powerful waves of suspicion thrown by the film and become enthusiastic about the mystery.
In the past, while watching such Hollywood films that meticulously dig into the dark sides of governments or power institutions, one often marveled at their freedom of expression, thinking, "The US can produce such provocative and sensitive films without censorship." However, now the South Korean film industry and its social atmosphere have matured enough to match that, establishing a foundation where even the most sensitive modern history can be freely used as creative material. An important point not to be overlooked here is that this film is not an independent indie flick, but a massive commercial project featuring a large cast of famous actors and a colossal production budget. For the production team, achieving commercial success to recover investments and generate profit was likely a much more desperate and crucial element than merely delivering a heavy sense of historical calling.
The film's narrative begins heavily by reconstructing the history of that day in 1974 when the First Lady was tragically killed during the shooting of President Park at Jangchungdan Park. The core driving force of this narrative lies in tenaciously digging into the fact that too many suspicious and unresolved circumstances are scattered behind this massive incident, which the investigative authorities of the time hastily concluded as a lone-wolf crime. By shedding light on the numerous suspicions that poured out immediately after the incident and the sloppy handling processes that are hard to accept reasonably, the film throws a strong question mark on whether it was truly the sole act of a single real culprit. In the process of tracking this, a tenacious newspaper reporter and a low-ranking police officer who was in charge of the security area at the venue during the incident each harbor doubts from their respective positions and embark on a dangerous search for the truth.
The closer they get to the truth, the more the actual records of the incident and the situation at the scene clash. Scientific doubts follow one after another: the number of gunshots recorded during the actual shooting, the types of bullet casings found at the scene, and the trajectory of the bullets in the culprit's gun do not match. Additionally, the process in which the real culprit, who was merely an ordinary young man, so easily breached the highest-level, tight security network attended by the head of state with just a forged ID card arouses strong suspicion. The film also captures the battle over the truth as the investigation details announced by the South Korean government and those announced by the Japanese side subtly contradict each other immediately after the incident. Because it was an oppressive era without the internet where information was perfectly controlled, the public in each country could not fully grasp what had happened that day.
The Yushin era, which serves as the backdrop of the play, was a grim time when the government directly censored and controlled each media outlet under the pretext of national security. No matter how sharp a reporter seeking to uncover the truth was in capturing suspicious circumstances and writing an article, harsh sanctions and suppression from authorities would strike before the newspaper was even printed, silencing the truth. The most mysterious part amidst these layers of veils is the difficulty in finding any clear clue or motive as to why the culprit decided on and executed such a massive assassination. The very fact that a Korean resident in Japan, born and raised there, would take the risk of boarding a flight to Korea to commit that monumental assassination acts as a blind spot that is not easily understood by common sense.
The film expands its narrative with the unconventional imagination that these numerous common-sense questions were actually linked to a certain conspiracy with a massive mastermind, closely related to the intertwined Korea-Japan relations and the regime's interests of the time. Throwing a relentless barrage of conspiracy theories at the audience, it tightly couples them with the barbarity of state violence and media suppression, heightening the tension. Aside from this heavy narrative, another interesting viewing point is that a surprisingly massive number of highly recognizable actors make appearances—blurring the lines between minor and supporting roles—almost reminiscent of a game of hidden object. Setting aside the heated debates over whether this is a distortion of historical facts or reasonable doubt, if approached purely as a well-made commercial political thriller, it offers a highly absorbing and entertaining experience. While evaluations will inevitably divide wildly based on each viewer's political beliefs and historical knowledge as they leave the theater, one cannot help but wonder what kind of resonance this bold film will leave behind.
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