The sleazy Byun Ho-sung is not exactly
Rumpole, but the lack of a corpse is the sort of loose end he masterfully
exploits. However, at times it is unclear whether his client really wants to
beat the rap. A rather complicated case unfolds both inside and outside the
courtroom in Heo Jong-ho’s The Advocate:
a Missing Body (trailer here),
which opens this Friday in New Jersey.
After winning a spectacular product liability victory
for a big pharma company, Byun is personally requested by the charismatic CEO
Moon Ji-hoon for an apparently hopeless charity case. His former driver Kim
Man-suk is accused of killing the woman he was allegedly stalking. He was
arrested in the dead woman’s apartment with blood on his shirt and his prints
on the supposed murder weapon. There was a lethal amount of blood splattered,
but the body is absent.
Yet, just as Byun starts to make hay over
other crime scene irregularities, Kim up and confesses in open court. Obviously,
Byun smells a fix. With the assistance of his long suffering office manager,
Mr. Park, Byun starts to follow the trail of clues back to Moon. Unfortunately,
the shady company will push back hard.
Frankly, it is sort of shame The Advocate eventually evolves into a
conspiratorial legal-medical thriller, because it starts out as a refreshingly
intriguing old fashioned murder mystery. Still, even though it is ostensibly a
breezy comedy-thriller, Heo is not afraid to go dark for an extended period of
time, which is cool. In fact, there is no way you can come out of the film with
a higher regard for lawyers. Unfortunately, the dastardly Moon and his
corporate crimes are predictably shopworn elements by now.
Nevertheless, the high stakes intrigue offers
a perfect showcase for the hardnosed and rubber-faced Lee Sun-kyun. Arguably, The Advocate could be considered the “Order”
follow-up to the “Law” of his breakout hit A Hard Day. He takes a similar licking here and keeps on grimacing. A
chameleon-like Kim Go-eun stands her ground against him as the principled
prosecutor Jin Sun-mi, who is still hung up on Byun, her former senior at
school. Jang Hyun-sung’s Moon is an adequate but not inspired villain. However,
Hong Song-duk really anchors the film as the mysterious and troubled accused.
