“It’s a nation’s duty to protect its citizens wherever they are,” according to a more earnest politician, though Blue House security advisor Jung-won (Lee Sun-kyun) counters him that actually their duty only extends to those who voted for them, and they expect wise political judgment. Jung-won is a classic political lackey in that he’s intensely cynical and his every living thought is about how best to spin any given circumstances so that his boss, Hyun-baek (Kim Tae-woo), will become Korea’s next president.
There’s something quite remarkable about the extent to which Jung-won has erased himself from this equation and dedicated his life to making Hyun-baek’s a success while otherwise leaving conventional human morality at the door and pursuing a doctrine of doing only that which is most politically expedient. Some of his detachment might be explained by the fact he lost his wife some time ago to a lengthy illness and is about to send his daughter, who views him with contempt, to study abroad in Australia thanks to a few strings pulled by Hyun-baek.
But as he later says, if Hyun-baek were actually there and seeing this for himself, he would make a different decision. Despite his cynicism, Jung-won eventually becomes a voice of authority during a moment of crisis and determines to set about rescuing the survivors rather than communicating with Hyun-baek about how best to turn this situation to their advantage. Paradoxically, he redeems the government in the eyes of those stranded on a bridge after a multi-car pileup in the middle of a particularly thick fog who come to realise that the authorities are not all that invested in rescuing them and may even be partly responsible for putting them in danger.
The Project Silence of the film’s title turns out to be one of creating genetically enhanced attack dogs who can chase a target with a specific voice. Apparently developed originally by the US and EU, the project is being researched in Korea but rendered a failure with the current batch of dogs set for “disposal”. That is, if they hadn’t been set loose by the accident and the possibly malicious actions of their handler who claims he was researching rescue dogs but was forced to reprogramme them to kill on the orders of the military. As he points out, the leader of the dogs, who has a head injury suggesting their programming has been disrupted, is only taking their revenge for their constant mistreatment at the hands of humans.
Then again, one of the ironies of Project Silence is that there is quite a lot going on from the unusually thick fog, the multi-car pileup caused by a live streamer driving recklessly for views, the toxic gas flowing from a crashed lorry, to the fact the bridge itself may collapse after the military helicopter sent to retrieve the dogs crashes and damages the support cables. All things considered, it is too much all at once considering the outlandishness of the evil dog plot. Though there are an assortment of survivors to become invested in as is usual in these kinds of films, we don’t always get to know them well enough with a series of subplots left unresolved such as the creepy behaviour of a Buffalo Bill-esque trucker who nevertheless becomes a kind of comic relief figure and eventual saviour of the group while becoming a reluctant buddy to Jung-won. Similarly, the dementia of an elderly woman (Ye Soo-jung) is intermittently brought up but never for any real reason nor is it ever fully explored, not even in her relationship with her husband who is responsible for her care. The younger of two bickering sister’s golf career does however turn out to have a practical application.
The conflict between Jung-won and his daughter, meanwhile, is largely mediated through her contempt for his callousness and resentment towards him for failing to address her mother’s death. Of course, saving the passengers is also a way to redeem himself in Kyoung-min’s (Kim Su-an) eyes much like the father in the similarly themed Train to Busan, though the awakening that Jung-won undergoes is more like the fog gradually lifting as he realises he is also being played by political manipulators while it is as he said different if you’re actually there and much harder to make the “sensible” decision to let the bridge collapse and take the potentially embarrassing evidence of their rogue science experiment with it. Perhaps that’s the real meaning of “project silence,” making sure there’s no one left to speak. But Jung-won is used to playing this game from the other side so he’s a few steps ahead and knows his best weapon is noise, tell everyone and do it right away so they don’t have time to shut you down nor can they deny it later. He may have been party to lingering authoritarianism, but has now realised that a nation’s primary duty is to protect its citizens after all, even if they voted for the other guy.
Project Silence is available in the UK on 4K UHD courtesy of Altitude.
Trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 