Lee Kyu-man’s fourth feature now out in the U.S. from Echelon Studios brings us an adaptation of a hit Japanese crime novel published in 2006 which was later adapted for TV Asashi in 2009. For this, we get a two-hour introspective crime epic in The Policeman’s Lineage that introduces the time-honored tale of two very different kinds of cops who land themselves en route to a whole lot of trouble.
The film opens with a footchase in a dark and murky street in the rain that results in the death of a cop and his killer getting away. That’s the bloody and grim precursor to the story of a by-the-book rookie named Choi Min-Jae (Choi Woo-sik), a third-generation police officer who gets courted by higher-ups and Internal Affairs, and assigned to a seperate unit led Park Kang-yoon (Cho Jin-woong) who is being investigated despite his exemplary arrest record, and his current efforts to nab the head of an elusive drug cartel.
The infiltration results in more than a slew of surprising turns for Choi after Park takes him under his wing. With Choi as close as he is to Park, the investiagtion uncovers stark revelations of his own tragic history as he not only finds himself learning more about his late father and why he was chosen as the mole, but the secret organization that funnels money to keep him in the field, and lengths to which a cop might go to deliver justice to criminals even worse than the average bad guy, even if it means breaking the law.
At two hours, the film runs at a slow burn at times, but it helps that the performances keep things going. Cho is a perfect pick to play the experienced chief muddying the gray areas of wearing a badge while fending off judicial bureaucracy, opposite Choi as the clean-cut up-and-comer struggling to come to terms with what it means to really be a cop. The role of Park has good intentions and can often be seen as misread figure, but definitely got a dark side to his methods and and Choi eventually finds that out the hard way.
The film runs low on action but high on dramatic intensity, so don’t expect wall-to-wall fisticuffs. Screenwriter Bae Young-ik’s treatment runs on high drama and intensity with enough energy to keep the interest going, even when some moments feel a little overlong than needed. If you enjoy films like The Corruptor, Dark Blue or Black Rain, or even regional thrillers like A Hard Day, The Unjust or Yaksha: Ruthless Operations, a film like The Policeman’s Lineage will certainly add to the weighted pondering of how cop roles are written, and its inescapable relevance to how we view cops today.