As the trailer for Broker highlights, this 2022 Korean film is from the same studio that created the 2019 Oscar-winner Parasite.  Both films contain a blend of mystery and family and social drama, although Parasite is overall much darker and well merits its thriller genre.  Broker exhibits beautiful artistry and social commentary like Parasite, but with sweet mixed with the bitter.  In Broker the characters take off their masks and lies as the story progresses, instead of putting them on.  And while you see barely, if any, redemption in Parasite, it runs as a thread of silver throughout Broker.

As in Parasite, Broker doesn’t look away from people’s crimes, selfish decisions, or mixed motives.  But what on the surface seems like a clear-cut crime of human trafficking turns out to involve people who view human life as inherently valuable, not just in terms of the money they deal in as brokers for adoption.*  Not to ennoble what the characters are doing—making a profit off abandoned children—, but they do not merely sell the child to the highest bidder.  Instead, you follow brokers Sang-hyun and Dong-soo as they turn down offer after offer because they don’t want the baby to end up in the wrong hands.

In many ways, the police sergeant investigating the child traffickers represents the audience’s viewpoint.  She asks the questions that you wonder and expresses the indignation you feel as you watch So-young abandon her son and a seemingly unscrupulous pair of men exploit a church’s baby box and adoption ministry.  So-young spends very little time trying to justify herself in the eyes of the other characters, only dwelling on the real reasons for her decision to give up her baby as the truth begins to catch up with her.

What seems like callous abandonment and irresponsibility turns out to be a mother’s attempt to protect her infant son from her own miserable life and bad choices.  Several times, the sergeant mutters to herself and even confronts So-young directly with the question: why have the child if you were just going to abandon him?  So-young responds by asking how killing her son could be less of a crime than abandoning him.  In a life of regrets, So-young never once displays any regret about her decision to have her son.

The brokers themselves are living proof of young mother Moon So-young’s belief that to live, even a miserable life, is better than never having been born at all.  As the film unfolds, you realize that every character has underlying pain that drives their decisions and where they have ended up.  In one of the most poignant threads of the story, Dong-soo (the younger of the two brokers) finally begins to heal after a lifetime of resenting his own mother, who abandoned him at an orphanage years before.  Getting to know So-young and finally understanding her predicament, Dong-soo wonders whether his mother may have also had difficult circumstances that led her to abandon him.  As So-young points out, this doesn’t merit forgiveness for his mother or make what she did right.  Yet, the path of forgiveness does find its start as Dong-soo offers to forgive So-young for what she has done—speaking to her the forgiveness he may never be able to give his mother and which at the time So-young’s infant son cannot offer.

In a way, Broker’s storyline carries echoes of baby Moses’ story in the Bible.  When dangerous circumstances lead a mother to abandon her baby, she (like Moses’ sister Miriam) can’t help but follow her son to make sure he’s going to be all right.  And while this baby’s rescuers are nothing like the princess of Egypt who found Moses and took him in, there is a sense in which even these lost men understand the need to protect an abandoned baby and find him a home—a home which, like in Moses’ story, ends up being with the very person who has been pursuing him and his family.  And as with Moses, Broker hints at this baby’s eventual reunion with his family.

---

*Converted to USD, the Korean market rate for human life in the movie is about $7,400 for a baby boy and $6,000 for a baby girl.