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Detective Sang-gil (Kang-ho Song) like many in his office is vying for a promotion. The interactions we witness lead us to believe that getting moved to higher ranking jobs is not an easy thing. Since the force works heavily in teams individual accolades are hard to come by and often success means sharing the benefits while failure is often owned individually. So Sang-gil is not happy when investigating a strange murder, where a man burned to death in his car, gets the news that he will be having a new detective starting with him that day. Detective Eun-Young (Na-yeong Lee) has just been moved off patrol and into the office. Sang-gil does not want to be baby sitting a newbie and worst yet she is a woman. This fact will be one of the two prominent features in the film. Eun-Young is one of the few women ever to get into the detective ranks and she wants to stay there. She wants to be accepted and do her job but the way Sang-gil is trying to solve the case without help is only going to hurt her chances. On the other hand she will not go around him and because of her inexperience needs him to help her through the case.
The sexism by the police officers around Eun-Young is pretty extreme to American liberal sensibilities. She gets it from every guy she interacts with, Sang-gil tells her to go home that there is nothing she will be able to do to help his investigation. She will just get in the way and he does not want her around. The detectives in the office make sexual jokes to Sang-gil about whether he has been fucking her after just the one afternoon of work. Not only that but Eun-Young is right there in the room and they ignore her and speak freely like she does not exist. It must be a cultural thing but the way she just accepted the abuse and then later apologized to Sang-gil for everything was very hard to watch. They assign he busy work, tell her she needs to do whatever they want and suggest that she would make a good bed mate.
This theme of the story goes all the way through the story. There is some story arc for Sang-gil where he eventually speaks up for her, defending her against the continuous onslaught of the other cops but it is unclear if this is any better. Where it seems she refuses to defend herself, having a male defender only continues the idea that she is not fit to be a cop. She never gets empowered as an individual within the group. Yes she does do some decent detective work which at least in the eyes of Sang-gil improves her standing but she also continues to make rookie mistakes. When it is brought up that she should be transferred back to patrol, Sang-gil defends her but since she never defends herself her fate in inevitable.
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Eventually the plot is fully revealed, and it really takes a wild trail of small clues before we get the entire story. The wolfdog cub was taken by a former police dog trainer, who has trained it to kill. Why do you ask? Well the child sex ring is run by the director of a children's organization. He has decided that since the two death's of his partners he is going to eliminate anyone who knows about his misdeeds. At the same time we learn that the cop had his daughter taken and abused in this sex ring and has trained the wolfdog to get revenge. All of this is really well put together crime thriller with the cops learning the parts one at a time. Then the film unfiortunately goes off the rails.
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The movie which overall was not a bad commentary on sexism in Korea really fails at the end. Unlike what you would expect in a Hollywood film, Eun-Young is not proven to fit in and is sent back to patrol. Sang-gil gets the promotion he wants but then does nothing for the partner that helped him move up. It really takes a bite although maybe a realistic one into the story arc. The strangeness of the wolfdog stuff also really harmed the recommendation I am giving this film. In the end it passes but only because of the social commentary.
Rating (5.1) 5.0 and up are recommended, some more than others.
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