Asian Home Cinema: The World of Silence Shouting on DVD

"The World of Silence" revolves around the mysterious serial murder case of young girls from the same orphanage. Three girls are missing and found dead under similar conditions, dressed in bizarre clothes and carrying odd looking dolls. It also revealed that they had been injected with a rare hallucinogenic drug before being murdered. Leading the investigations is a bad-mannered, world-weary detective Kim (Park Yong-woo), who strongly believes in following his intuition after five years in the career. After Kim encounters a man named Ryu Jung-ho (Kim Sang-kyeong) several times under strange circumstances, he begins to grow suspicious of him. Ryu is a professional photographer that has just recently returned from the U.S, he takes on the guardianship of a young girl named Park Su-yeon (Han bo-hae), whose mother is in a coma. It appears that Ryu has a mysterious ability to read minds and hearing the "silent" conversations of those located impossibly far away from him. The situation reaches a crisis point when the killer abducts Su-yeon, forcing the two men into a deadly confrontation.

The newly released thriller "The World of Silence" DVD, is the second feature film of director Jo Eui-seok, while his first feature is 2002 Make It Big. This movie had the superficial look of a smooth, psychological thriller backed by excellent performances by three strong leads. Park Yong-woo as Detective Kim, has become one of the most wanted actors after success with recent high-profile films as the unpredicted surprise hit comedy "My Scary Girl" and the historical thriller "Blood Rain". While watching his performance here, I thought he looked common, but never realized who he was until the finale credits rolled out. Kim Sang-kyeong as Ryu, also played in critically acclaimed "Memories of Murder", another movie that also concerning with serial killer theme, his recent job is "May 18" which breaking the Korean box office this month (Read the news here). his character here worked well in clouding the true personality and always left the audience with an uneasy felling about what his true motive may have been, The tense chemistry between this two men drives the movie as the plot builds up to its gripping conclusion. And Han Bo-bae performance as Park Su-yeon here was creditable for someone at her age, she was also portray an abducted girl in her previous role on "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance". While the performances were generally good, the movie was misleadingly styled as cat and mouse battle between detective and suspect, Silence is actually more of an offbeat character piece, with Kim and Ryu never actually entering into any of the kind of games which might have bee

n estimated, and with viewers being for the most part left to their own devices to determine the identity of the killer. Although a little slow throughout the padded middle section and essentially deficient in any kind of action, Silence moves along at a good rate, with some well timed plot developments giving it an unforced feel for the most part, plus many twists and turns that even seem don't quite suspend together, but the director Jo Eui-seok certainly deserves extra points for trying.

Product Details:

Product Title: The World of Silence Limited Edition
Actors: Kim Sang-Kyung, Park Yong-Woo, Han Bo-Bae, Lee Me-ri, Jeong Gyoo-soo, Lee Jong-soo
Directors: Jo Eui-seok
Format: Widescreen 2.35:1 (Anamorphic) , Color, NTSC
Language: Korean
Subtitle: English, Korean
Audio Specs: Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0
Region: Region 3
Number of discs: 1
Country Made: South Korea
Distributor: HB Entertainment Korea
Release Date: March 19, 2007 (South Korea)
Run Time: 107 + 35 minutes