Thank you for being born

When I first heard of Broker, the blurb noted it was from the director of Shoplifters, a movie that I'd heard of but didn't see, although I do believe it was shown here in Madison. Shoplifters seems to have concerned a family of meager means whose members turn to theft to get by. Here, we see a makeshift family assembled as they all get by the best that they can.

Ha Sang-hyeon and his pal Dong-soo take babies left at a church baby box and sell them to prospective parents. One night a young woman named Moon So-young leaves her child on the sidewalk in front of the baby box and walks away. Soo-jin puts the child in the box so that the 2 brokers can go about their business and she, along with her partner Detective Lee, can catch them in the act.

Moon So-young goes back for the child and is forced to track the 2 men down. She does and goes along for the ride to meet a couple looking to buy the baby. It goes poorly and they take a break by visiting the orphanage that Dong-soo grew up in. Long after having driven away, the brokers find that they have a stowaway, Hae-jin, a boy who hid in the back of their van. A family is born.

The members of this new family bond - at one point they thank one another for being born - on a road trip in search of a buyer and are followed by the detectives.

The avuncular Song Kang-ho played Ha Sang-hyeon and I recognized him from Parasite but forgot he was in The Host and Snowpiercer. Bae Doona is Soo-jin and I recalled her from Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending.

Broker is a very good flick that deftly alternated between gentle humor and touching human portraits of people looking to just get by. By and large, it's a light-hearted affair but most of the characters not only go on a journey across South Korea in a van but also go on personal journeys where they undergo change and complete the process by making sacrifices for someone else.

I might just have to rent Shoplifters now.