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Review | Busan 2022: The Boys movie review – Sol Kyung-gu plays the lone good police officer in overwrought dramatisation of a true case of miscarriage of justice
- Chung Ji-young’s drama The Boys, starring Sol Kyung-gu, tackles the true story of the wrongful imprisonment of three young men for robbery-homicide
- The cast are excellent and the movie is slickly executed, but the story builds towards a ridiculous courtroom showdown, leaving viewers feeling manipulated
Reading Time:2 minutes
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2/5 stars
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Recreating a true story of wrongful imprisonment and high-level corruption, Chung Ji-young’s latest drama The Boys stars Sol Kyung-gu as the lone good police officer who dared to take on his own shady department.
Yu Jun-sang, Yeom Hye-ran and Heo Sung-tae fill out a strong ensemble cast, but Jeong’s sensationalist approach to this genuinely upsetting story soon descends into unwieldy and overwrought melodrama.
Set in South Korea’s rural Wanju province in 1999, the story opens with the hasty conviction of three young men for robbery-homicide, after they apparently broke into a small supermarket, bound and gagged the family who owned it, and stole cash and jewellery.
The family’s elderly grandmother died during the incident, and the boys confessed to the crime soon after their arrest.
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A year later, detective Hwang Joon-cheol (Sol) is transferred to the district, and receives a tip-off that the convicted boys were in fact innocent.
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