Joint Security Area

Joint Security Area (공동경비구역 JSA, 2000) is a Korean thriller from Park Chan-wook that you can watch online on iFILM. In the truce village of Panmunjom, right on the line dividing the two Koreas, shots ring out one night: two North Korean soldiers lie dead and a South Korean sergeant is wounded.

A neutral party is called in to find out what happened. The case goes to a major of Swiss-Korean descent (Lee Young-ae), and from the first interviews the Northern and Southern accounts simply refuse to match. One side speaks of an abduction, the other of self-defence, and there are more spent shells on the ground than anyone can explain. Behind the paperwork sits the thing both shooters won't say: what actually tied these soldiers together across the border. Lee Byung-hun and Song Kang-ho lead the cast.

This was Park Chan-wook's first major hit, three years before Oldboy, and one of the highest-grossing Korean films of its era. He doesn't shoot a border action picture but a story about men ordered to be enemies. Stream Joint Security Area (2000) online on iFILM.