This review was originally part of our coverage from the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.
The various stunning works from acclaimed writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda have, quite often, been about the relationships that develop via found families in a harsh world. In the films he creates, people are flawed yet fascinating all the same. No matter who they are or how they live, there is an overwhelming sense of love he has for each of them. His newest, the road-trip drama Broker, packs this same sensibility with richly realized characters and a cast that all give outstanding performances. Even when it gets a bit lost on the way, the journey we are taken on is both abundantly sweet and soul-crushingly sad. There is plenty of earned humor even as it begins ripping your heart from your chest, piece by painful piece.
It all begins when So-young (Lee Ji-eun) leaves her child outside a church drop box. She does so under the cover of darkness with rain pouring down all around her. The baby is then taken in by Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won) and Sang-hyeon (Song Kang-ho). However, rather than go through any normal process, they scrub the security footage of the woman and her child ever being there. You see, the duo are what are known as “brokers” who run an illegal business of providing abandoned children to parents for adoption. They do so for whatever fee they can negotiate and have been seemingly doing so for quite a while. When So-young returns back for her son, fulfilling the promise she left on a note that she would do so, they end up all agreeing that they will go to complete the illicit adoption together. It will require hitting up multiple potential parents and a lot of traveling around in a beat up van.
Complicating matters is that, unbeknownst to the trio, they are being followed by a pair of police officers who are hoping to catch them in the act and arrest them. The veteran Ji-Sun (Bae Doona) and her new partner (Lee Joo-young) are staking out the operation at every additional turn. Where the former is much more dead set on the righteousness of their work the latter is increasingly uncertain that this is the right thing to do. It dances around whether this may be entrapment of some kind that only ends up hurting all parties involved more than they already have been. There is also another police investigation surrounding an incident that initially seems extraneous though will come crashing into the main narrative. This is all rather busy, often to the film’s detriment, though the story soon settles into something sublime.
At the center of this is Song Kang-ho. Many will know him from his similar show-stopping work in Parasite, but he is also so much more than that. The actor said before the premiere screening at the festival that there is more of himself in this character as compared to that prior work and this proves to be undeniably true the longer it goes on. You can just feel his charisma in every single wisecrack he makes or song he sings to himself while driving along the road. This ensures that, as we see the flaws of his character remain in the forefront and some of his more painful past echo into the present, we grow to understand him so deeply that it hurts. Some of the ending scenes he gets are so self-assured yet devastating that you just sit in awe amidst the agony. With a single pained expression or heartbroken hesitation, he shatters the charismatic shell the character has built up around himself for protection.
Of course, no single actor can carry a film like this alone and all the rest of the cast are nothing short of magnificent. Lee Ji-eun starts her character off as being more understandably cautious as, after all, she doesn’t know these men that had essentially kidnapped her child and lied to her face about it. Her justifiable anger proves to be just as flooring as the quieter moments where she reflects on what the best future for her child will be. She has been forced into bad situation after bad situation to survive with the latest being about making an impossible choice between raising her child herself and giving it to others who may be able to provide a better chance than she can. Even when other characters judge her, the film itself never does as it builds a multidimensional portrait of all of who she is.
On the flip side of this is Gang Dong-won whose character was himself left at an orphanage by his own mother and still carries that with him all these years later. The film reveals this information not to make excuses for his own actions, but more to help understand how he has arrived at the person he is now. Each of the characters are ones that the film is overflowing with compassion for without ever cutting corners on grappling with their rough edges. It can hurt to then hold them so close and tightly, yet embrace them the film does.
For all the ways it can get lost in the weeds of the less compelling police storylines, which do end up connecting back eventually, the extended scenes without them are all beautiful to behold. An extended conversation playing out on a Ferris wheel rips the very breath out of you as the characters contemplate their futures openly and honestly. When going through a car wash, an unexpected guest on the trip turns the mundane into something magical. The more we come to see these characters spending time together, the more natural and loving it feels.
This is quite an accomplishment as what they are undertaking can be a bit unhinging, in ways that feel intentional and others that don’t, before bringing everything back together. While there are more than a few quibbles to be had with how the ending arranges the pieces back together, there is just so much vibrant work from both behind and in front of the camera. When it all comes together it proves to be yet another poetic and patient cinematic reflection on the families we build for ourselves from one of the best observers of humanity to ever do it.
Rating: B+
Broker is now playing in theaters.