“Veteran” starts out as a comedy then slowly morphs into a serious crime thriller. The humor never goes away completely, but it takes a backseat to the detective story. In a lesser film, this rash change of pace would be its downfall. In “Veteran,” it surprisingly works, with the tonal change working in the story’s favor. We’re introduced to a lightweight environment that slowly dissipates as a more serious subject matter arises. This makes the main plot, which is admittedly formulaic, seem severe.
The tonal change even befits the cop’s personal journey. Detective Seo Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-Min) is a hotshot loose cannon at the beginning of the film and slowly progresses into a more controlled officer by the end. He’s still a loose cannon throughout, but one with a direct focus. No longer is Seo a corny personality that dances to initiate a police raid, but a more grounded individual (albeit still with a sly sense of humor).
What sets Seo on the straight and narrow, so to speak, is the attempted suicide of his friend, Bae (Jeong Woong-in). Bae is a truck driver barely making ends meet with his contractor still owing him back payments. Seo befriends him by hiring him as a chauffeur, such as in the delivery of stolen automobiles to aid in the aforementioned police raid. This seems like a cheap ploy at first on writer/director Ryoo Seung-wan’s part to humanize the cocky veteran, but it plays nicely into the overall story. It’s the termination of Bae’s contract that has him meet with one of the corporation’s head honchos, snobby rich kid Jo Tae-oh (Yoo Ah-In). While he gets his back payments, it’s at the hand of humiliation, as he was forced to fight his contractor for the money in front of his own child.
The corporation, Jin Sin, made sure to cover their tracks and conveniently have a security update running during the assault, that way it couldn’t be filmed on the security cameras. Seo only discovers of the fight after Bae’s son reveals it to him in. It’s during this emotional exchange that we see a more compassionate side of Seo. He may have been the father telling his son earlier that fighting is okay, but losing isn’t, but we also see that deep-down he has a good heart. I promise it doesn’t come off as cheesy as I made it sound.
From here, the film is a crackling investigative thriller with action set pieces sprinkled throughout. Ryoo throws in some twists to keep things interesting, which also help in elevating the material from growing stagnant. While we’d obviously root for Seo to reveal the company as the shady organization that they are, we need more than an attempted suicide to take them down with. Bae attempting to take his own life (he survived and is in a coma) seems a little fishy and forced, which comes into play the more that is revealed. I wasn’t completely on board at the outset, but I was fully engaged by movie’s end.
What makes it so easy to cheer for Seo is in witnessing how much of a smarmy douchebag that Tae-oh is! This is a man that bribes and humiliates former employees to save face, bribes his personal assistant to take the heat for him, breaks the leg of a bodyguard to prove his worthlessness, beats his dog with a golf club, and impregnates a model then assaults her for it. It’s almost cartoonish how much of an asshole he is. It got to the point where I was expecting him to brandish a moustache simply so he could twirl it after each wrongdoing. Yet, he never veers too far into over-the-top territory, staying grounded just enough for us to want to hate him. Had he become a caricature we would’ve laughed him off, not despise him. Instead, he still registers as an immoral human being that we detest and can’t wait to see get his comeuppance!
Even the humor gets better the more serious the film gets, strangely enough. While none of it was ever groan-inducing, the jokes never quite connected in the first half of the film. The only one that ever elicited a chuckle from me was the running gag of men getting hit in the groin in every fight. Ryoo’s dedication to such a low-brow gag made it hard not to find it amusing. The gags get better because they naturally fit into the story. One particularly funny moment has Seo and two higher-ranking officers using their injuries sustained in the field as leverage in an argument. It works not only because it’s a comical situation, but also because it goes a long way in showing just how important the investigation has become. Seo is willing to resort to practically pleading by using his injuries as leverage in order to keep the crumbling investigation afloat.
“Veteran” isn’t a groundbreaking film by any means. The story is one that you’d find in numerous investigative thrillers and the action is average in comparison to the usual Korean action output. Ryoo directs it all with such confidence and tight pacing that one becomes glued to the screen. It takes a while for it to pick up, but once it does, “Veteran” becomes a solid little thriller.
Final Rating: B