The Vanished – Movie Review
Director: Denis Dercourt
Writer: Denis Dercourt (Screenplay)
Writer: Peter May (Novel)
Cast
- Olga Kurylenko (Black Widow)
- Yoo Yeon-Seok (Old Boy)
- Ji-won Ye (Old Miss Daisy)
- Moo-Seong Choi
Plot: Alice Launey, a French forensic expert still haunted by her past, comes to Seoul to present her work. She will meet Jin-Ho, a detective who asks for her help on a murder case. Drawn into network trafficking, she needs to face her fears.
Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: The Vanished starts when Jin-ho Park (Yeon-Seok) gets his latest case, a dead body they can’t identify. This sees him turning to forensic expert Alice Launey (Kurylenko) to help in the investigation. Alice discovers who the victim is, which sends Jin-ho down a dangerous path.
The pair start investigating a potential human trafficking scheme, where body parts are being sold on the black market. This starts to get closer than planned as Alice must deal with her own past traumas.
Verdict on The Vanished
Characters
Alice Launey is a French forensics expert working in Seoul. She is an expert in her field and holds talks about her work. Alice is brought in to help with identifying a body helping unlock the case. Her skills are needed to help with other bodies discovered along the way.
Jin-ho Park is a Seoul detective that turns to Alice for advice on identifying a body. He is a great detective and knows his city like the back of his hand. Sadly, we don’t learn much more about him, he is pretty much a generic figure in this world.
This is a problem with a lot of the cast, nobody seems to get anything to make them stand out in this movie. Even the criminal side of everything feels generic, calm and calculated figures we have seen hundreds of times.
Performances
Olga Kurylenko does the best she can with her tormented character. Only we could have gone a lot deeper into her past to get more out of the character. Yoo Yeon-Seok does everything he needs to but like Olga, we don’t get enough from the character.
Story
The story follows a detective teaming up with a forensics expert to solve the latest case he is facing. It takes down a dangerous path of human trafficking for body parts as the pair look to solve who is behind it.
This is an interesting detective story that feels like it could be an episode of ‘Bones’. It could have been a lot darker instead of how everything it approached, seemingly getting most of the investigation completed for the first body. Not enough goes into the case to show the pure scale of the operation that could have been going on.
Themes
The Vanished is a crime thriller that dives into an investigation of humans trafficking for body parts in Seoul. It does have some graphic moments while studying a dead body but otherwise it keeps everything at the investigation not the chase stage.
Where to Watch: Signature Entertainment presents The Vanished on Digital Platforms 7th November.
Final Thoughts – The Vanished is a by the book darker criminal investigation movie.
