Broker

The Broker represents peak independent cinema, it seemed to slip through the cracks of 2022. In a year that was filled with very loud movies, The Broker slips through with a beautiful story and delicate character work that is rare to see in a world of superheroes and spies.

The idea is that these two men are being followed by cops for human trafficking as they attempt to sell an abandoned baby, as the baby’s mother joins them as well as a stow away orphan. This story of found family was heartfelt and realistic. Love didn’t conquer all, it simply led to the best outcome for everyone involved. It ended with love and hope and though the journey there wasn’t easy the film wrapped up with the best ending an audience could have been given…a real one.

The one thing I would really like to highlight is the character work, some people (me) have very little empathy or patience for bad people. If you murder someone and abandon your baby, you are in fact a bad person. I am not the person to excuse these actions because of “circumstance” however the structure of the film allowed for the audience to get attached to the main characters before revealing anything else about them. As the plot gets revealed and more is shown of where these characters came from, it was too late to bring in your own prejudices. The writing made you feel for the characters first and think about their actions and circumstances later. I think the ability to do that is brilliant and very rare.

I love watching foreign films and I really wish films like this weren’t overlooked because people don’t want to read during their movies. Foreign films have a universality to their themes that movies in America tend to lose due to always trying to create something that will make the most money possible. Now part of that is due to The Broker being an independent film, and in America independent films also tend to hold more emotion than major blockbusters. I really hope it gets an Oscar nod for the foreign film category (not that awards mean much, especially the Oscars in the last decade). I think the performances from the entire cast were phenomenal. Also they picked the cutest kids in the world to be in this movie.

Favorite scenes of the movie include; When Hae-jin asks to go with them so he can become a famous soccer player and make a lot of money, it was super cute and his character was easily one of my favorite parts of the movie.

“Thank You For Being Born”, this moment was very touching, and sweet and in a room full of characters that had all clearly been through a lot of trauma it was so necessary for them all to hear, and it was big for them to say.

The entire ending, I thought it was real and hopeful and was the happiest ending that these characters could have realistically reached.

The movie was filled with great scenes but some were emotional and funny. I highly encourage literally everyone to watch this movie as it exists theatres.

Overall I think the movie was a 9/10, again only because I am very stingy with what I consider a perfect movie. But I will say that it has the emotional magnitude to need the big screen of a theater but also has the quiet comfort to be a curled up on the couch movie. It has the perfect re-watchability factor, and I think it holds the potential to be a classic.