''Puzzle'' () is a 2006
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
n
neo-noir
Neo-noir is a film genre that adapts the visual style and themes of 1940s and 1950s American film noir for contemporary audiences, often with more graphic depictions of violence and sexuality. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the term ...
crime film
Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as Drama (film and television), dr ...
, the feature directorial debut of Kim Tae-kyung.
[Mudge, James (15 December 2006)]
"Puzzle (2006) Movie Review"
''Beyond Hollywood''. Retrieved 2013-03-26. A group of crooks are summoned together by an unknown master planner to carry out a bank robbery, but then it goes fatefully wrong.
Plot
The film opens with an image of a man being burned alive on the floor of a warehouse. A figure, shrouded in darkness, walks away from this burning body in the down pouring rain.
Suddenly, the film cuts to two men in the middle of a bank heist who, coolly and efficiently, partake stacks of bonds from a safety deposit box. The two men with two more accomplices, along with a hostage in their trunk, drive towards some unknown location away from the city, soon to be revealed as the very warehouse in which the man was previously seen being burned alive. Upon their arrival, one of the criminals, whose name is Ryu, enters the warehouse to discover, to his horror, that the man in which they were supposed to pass the bonds off to now is a charcoaled corpse lying in the middle of the floor. The other three criminals enter as well and are shocked as well at the sight.
Questions begin to arise: what is their next plan of action? Do they wait until the mysterious man who hired them arrives, whom none of the criminals have met? Do they simply split the bonds and make a run for it? But soon the questions give way to accusations as the criminals begin to turn on one another, suspecting that one of them may, in fact, be the very man who hired them, and who must have set ablaze the now smoldering corpse.
The rest of the film is told in a series of flashbacks that explain events that led up to the bank heist, which are intercut with scenes in the present as the criminals begin to probe one another for answers to this confusing puzzle...
Cast
*
Joo Jin-mo Joo Jin-mo may refer to:
* Joo Jin-mo (actor, born 1958), South Korean actor
* Joo Jin-mo (actor, born 1974)
Joo Jin-mo (born Park Jin-tae on 26 September 1974), is a South Korean actor. He is best known for his leading roles in the films '' ...
- Ryu
*
Moon Sung-keun
Moon Sung-keun (; born May 28, 1953) is a South Korean actor and politician. He has won three Blue Dragon Film Awards, two Baeksang Arts Awards, and two Chunsa Film Art Awards for Best Actor.
Career
Moon was born in Tokyo, Japan. His father was ...
- Hwan
*
Hong Seok-cheon
Hong Seok-cheon (born February 3, 1971) is a South Korean actor, television personality, restaurateur and member of the dissolved Democratic Labor Party. He caused considerable controversy in his home country when he came out as gay in 2000, ...
- Noh
*Kim Hyun-sung - Jung
*Park Jun-seok - Kyu
*
Kim Dae-myung
Kim Dae-myung (born February 16, 1981) is a South Korean actor. He began his acting career in theater, then rose to fame in the television series
A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any con ...
Production
The film crew started and completed the shooting of the film without a single word written about it, with no mention on TV or elsewhere, keeping the plot under wraps and eschewing any kind of publicity. This unconventional approach to distribution wasn't a success as it failed to generate enough viewer interest to increase its box office intake.
CJ Entertainment
CJ ENM Films & Television, formerly CJ Entertainment, () is a South Korean entertainment, film production, and distribution company under CJ ENM Entertainment Division. The company operates as a film production company, film publishing house, in ...
sold its package of ''Four Horror Tales'' and ''Puzzle'' to
Blitz Entertainment for rights in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
and
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
.
See also
*
Cinema of Korea
The cinema of Korea encompasses the film industries of North Korea and South Korea, as well as the historical film industries of Korea as the kingdom of Joseon and under Korea under Japanese rule, Japanese occupation. While both countries have re ...
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Puzzle (2006 Film)
2006 films
2006 crime thriller films
2006 psychological thriller films
South Korean crime thriller films
South Korean heist films
South Korean neo-noir films
Cinema Service films
2000s Korean-language films
South Korean psychological thriller films
2000s South Korean films