Netflix's Korea-Japan crime thriller trades 2002 World Cup fever for contorted bodies, cryptic messages and two detectives who don't agree on much. It premieres Nov. 20.
Two detectives, two countries, one killer who leaves bodies twisted into impossible shapes: The Blue Road has its main trailer, and it arrives with a premiere date of November 20 on Netflix.
The series pairs Son Suk-ku as Kim Seok, a detective with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, and Eita Nagayama as Inose, a detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. A Korean and a Japanese lead sharing top billing in a crime drama is not a combination you see every season, which is part of the pull here.
A poster with a plot twist in the background
Netflix also released the main key art, and it’s smarter than the usual two-faces-in-moody-light layout. Kim Seok stands in front of streets lined with Japanese signage. Behind Inose, the signs are Korean. Each man is planted in the other’s territory, and the picture does the premise’s work before a single frame of footage plays.
There’s a date stamp hidden in the crowd, too. Korean soccer fans wrapped in the national flag and dressed in red point to 2002, the year of the Korea-Japan World Cup, when the whole country was caught up in the tournament. A co-hosted World Cup is an apt backdrop for a story about two nations forced to share a problem.
What the trailer shows
It opens cold. A young girl is snatched by an unidentified assailant while she’s picking up a suspicious packet of meds inside a deserted building. Then a body surfaces with its limbs grotesquely contorted, and the investigation begins.
Kim Seok proposes teaming up with Inose. Inose says no, and makes it plain that catching the killer is the only thing he cares about. So the partnership starts as a negotiation, and not a friendly one.
The trailer then slips in a more unnerving figure: a man who listens to the sound of bones snapping through his headphones as though it were music. Whether he’s behind the murders is left open. Another killing follows, and the cast widens:
Li Yoon-ok (Kim Shin-rock) is a Zainichi Korean businesswoman who challenges the detectives on how far they’re willing to go. Seo Hyun-tae (Jung Jae-young) is a heavyweight of Japan’s criminal underworld, and he finally comes face-to-face with Kim Seok. Yoon Soo-kyung (Choi Sung-eun) is a government agent who clashes with Inose.
Zainichi Korean, the term for ethnic Koreans living in Japan, is a detail worth noting. It puts a character from the diaspora at the center of a story about the line between the two countries, rather than leaving her at its edges.
Fists, snow and Kowloon
The footage isn’t confined to interrogation rooms. Kim Seok and Inose trade punches in intense hand-to-hand combat. The trailer also cuts to vast, snow-covered landscapes in Central Asia and to the densely packed buildings of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, a location that photographs like a maze made of concrete. Netflix is promising hard-hitting action and an international sweep, and the trailer backs up both claims.
Behind the camera is director Han Jun-hee, whose sophisticated, stylish mise-en-scène is one of the pillars Netflix names for the series. The others are the chemistry between Son Suk-ku and Eita Nagayama and a supporting cast that includes Kim Shin-rock, Choi Sung-eun and Jung Jae-young. Netflix describes the result as a riveting, hardboiled crime thriller that crosses borders.
The setup is easy to like: two cops who start out refusing to work together, a case that won’t stay inside one country’s jurisdiction, and a year, 2002, when Korea and Japan were looking at each other across a shared stadium. Mark November 20 on the calendar. The Blue Road premieres that day, exclusively on Netflix.
Via Netflix
