The Suspect is a 2013 film from South Korea, directed by Won Shin-yun.
Ji Dong-cheol (Gong Yoo) is a taxi driver from Seoul. He's also a defector from North Korea who lives in a shabby little shack. However it turns out that he's really a former North Korean special forces agent
who is in the country to find and kill one Ri Kwang-jo, another former North Korean agent who betrayed Ji and killed Ji's wife and daughter.
That would be challenging enough, but things get worse. One night Ji is visiting his part-time employer, industrial magnate Park Geon-ho, when Park is murdered by a death squad. The murder plot was headed by Kim Seok-ho, the deeply corrupt and criminal head of the NIS, South Korea's spy agency. Kim pins the murder on Ji and arranges a task force to hunt Ji down, so now Ji must evade arrest while still looking for Ri. The task force is headed by a Colonel Min, an honorable man whose career was damaged after an unfortunate past encounter with Ji Dong-cheol. Also playing a part in the story is Choi Kyung-hee, a reporter who pretends that she is making a documentary about North Korean defectors, but is really investigating Kim Seok-ho's criminal deeds.
Tropes:
- After Action Patch Up: Choi sews up a superficial bullet wound suffered by Ji after the two of them escape a police chase. The quiet interlude is interrupted when one of Kim's assassins barges in.
- As You Know: Choi and her partner Joo go through this after hearing that a businessman named Park has been murdered.Choi: Haejoo Group's Chairman Park?
Joo: You interviewed him recently! - Briefcase Full of Money:
- In a flashback, Ji the North Korean secret agent brings one to a meeting with American arms dealers in Puerto Rico, one which turns out to be a CIA sting. He fights his way out.
- Song, the corrupt director at Haejoo Group who basically commissioned the Park murder, brings a car trunk full of money to his rendezvous with Kim. (It takes a lot of Korean won to make $30 million.)
- Call-Back: In a flashback, Ji's wife says that she talks to her unborn daughter about him, and that she's heard that if a mom talks to her unborn baby about her father, the baby will recognize the father after birth. In the last scene, Ji's daughter Ji Se-bom recognizes him when he shows up in China to rescue her.
- Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Ji is in the South to find and kill Ri Kwang-jo. He just happens to be at Chairman Park's home when the latter is murdered, getting Ji tangled up in the assassination plot which had nothing to do with him.
- Colonel Badass: Colonel Min Se-hoon. His introductory scene involves him dropping one of his men out of a plane without a parachute in order to save Capt. Jo's life, then coolly picking up a spare chute, diving after the falling guy, catching him in mid-air, slapping him back to life when they hit the ground, then swaggering away smoking a cigarette. He then puts on a leather jacket and shades and spends the rest of the film ripping apart a secret government conspiracy while simultaneously hunting down Ji, a North Korean master assassin.
- Door-Closes Ending: The last scene has Ji arriving at a Chinese slave labor wheat farm where his daughter is a captive. The whip-wielding Chinese slave drivers step into their hut. Ji steps in after them and closes the door, Smash to Black, roll credits.
- Dope Slap: As Choi Kyung-hee is being interrogated, Jo, in the observation room, says "She looks prettier in person." Min smacks him upside the head with a folder.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Near the end Col. Min, pointing a gun at Ji, dramatically cocks it...and then hands it to Ji to use on Director Kim.
- Exact Progress Bar: A rare example of the computer's progress going too fast. Capt. Jo is trying to run a print on a bullet surreptitiously—he suspects correctly that it belongs to Director Kim. To his horror one of the lower-level NIS techs stands right behind him as the scan is running. The tech steps away just as the progress bar reaches 100% and the computer confirms that Director Kim left the print on the bullet.
- Foreshadowing: Chairman Park makes an idle comment about how buckthorn grows well in North Korea. It turns out that the MacGuffin was a genetically engineered strain of buckthorn that Park was planning to give to the North Koreans.
- Fruit Cart: Ji crashes into a truck full of oranges, while fleeing from police.
- Glasses Pull: Min pulls his aviator's sunglasses off after being told the name of the man he's supposed to catch.
- How We Got Here: The film opens with a scene of Ji running from police, leaping off a bridge into the Han River, before the story dials back to his life as a cab driver.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Ri Kwang-jo meets his end, when, during a fight, Ji accidentally drives him straight on to a piece of rebar sticking out of a concrete wall.
- Kubrick Stare: Both Kim and Ji, basically whoever has the upper hand, do this to each other during the climactic fight at NIS headquarters.
- Let Off by the Detective: Col. Min deploys the Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee trope, to allow Ji to escape, so that Ji can flee to China and rescue his daughter.
- MacGuffin: Chairman Park's glasses, which contain a hidden microfiche, which was the reason for the murder. The bad guys think it's a formula for a chemical weapon, but it's actually a new, hardy, pesticide-resistant strain of buckwheat.
- The Man They Couldn't Hang: The silliest moment in the movie has Ji hanged by the North Koreans, who helpfully walk away right after dropping him through a trap door. His hands are tied behind his back, but he manages to rotate his arms backwards 180 degrees to grab the rope and pull himself up.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Captain Jo, Min's old friend and second-in-command who's an efficient assistant but who's mainly in the movie to make goofy comments and provide comic relief.
- Roof Hopping: Ji does this a couple of times when running from police, taking some long leaps between buildings and once jumping down to the ground via a couple of balconies.
- Smug Snake: Director Kim, the villain, who always has a smug grin and a chuckling manner even as he's promising to kill people.
- Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee: At the end, Col. Min tosses a paper to Ji, on which is written the address where Ji's daughter is being held as slave labor in China. Min then parks his car outside a convenience store and says, very intently, that he's going inside to buy some cigarettes. Sure enough, when he comes back out with his smokes, Ji has slipped the handcuffs and escaped.
- Title Drop: A TV reporter says that "a pistol was removed from the suspect's residence." (Director Kim planted the murder weapon in Ji's shack.)
- Walk and Talk: Kim and Min do this through the snaking hallways of the NIS as the former explains to the latter what is going on with Ji Dong-cheol, the man that Min has to catch.
