(Spoiler Alert) My review after watching Assassins

First of all, I do think it is a truly subtle and devious movie. Specific intentions are hidden throughout the film.
Since others have likely discussed many of the other contents, I will only talk about relatively minor details. Spoilers ahead.
Right after the initial shooting, the doctor who operated on First Lady Yuk Young-soo appears to give a brief briefing, but he makes a strange facial expression. Seeing this, Lee Min-ho immediately suspects him, saying things like "the doctor's expression was strange" or "something is off."
I mean, lol. That doctor was a real person at the time, and I found it quite ridiculous how the movie deliberately keeps the conspiracy theory alive by giving off such a shady nuance. However, this kind of direction continues throughout the entire film.
The character played by Yoo Hae-jin is a fictional police officer who faces dismissal because he failed to provide proper security during the sniper incident. A junior officer who was renting a room in Yoo Hae-jin's house was guarding the entrance at the time, but because he simply let Moon Se-gwang pass through, he was taken away and subjected to all kinds of torture, including waterboarding.
Yet, the movie depicts it as if even this was not the policeman's fault, but rather that Um Tae-woong, the Presidential Security Service Chief, intentionally let him pass through, lol.
What's even funnier is the scene arrangement.
In the middle, there is a short scene of First Lady Yuk Young-soo's funeral, where Um Ji-won, playing Yoo Hae-jin's wife, watches the funeral on TV with some neighborhood women and sheds tears. However, the film continuously cross-cuts that scene with the scene of the junior officer being waterboarded and beaten in Namsan.
Why bother??? Why go out of the way to cross-cut these two scenes?
It seemed as if they were deliberately creating an image that says, "While the ignorant citizens were crying while watching the funeral, an innocent person was being dragged away and tortured."
From these minor directorial choices, I could clearly feel what direction the director wanted to push the audience to think in.
Of course, I can understand the main characters like Park Hae-il, Yoo Hae-jin, and Lee Min-ho saying lines like "What is the truth?", "Reveal the truth!", "It's a lie!", or "There is definitely a mastermind behind this." It is a movie about harboring suspicion and tracking a specific incident.
But the problem starts after that.
The film continuously links this incident to the kidnapping of DJ (Kim Dae-jung), the issue of compensation from Japan, Korea-Japan cooperative relations, and the stock prices of Japanese companies involved in subway construction.
In the movie, through a female reporter's dialogue, it's presented as if various issues between Korea and Japan were solved all at once due to this shooting incident, and that emergency measures were lifted as anti-Japanese protests broke out.
On top of that, it connects it to the DJ kidnapping incident by mentioning how the stock prices of a fictional Japanese company rose and fell at specific times.
Ultimately, what it makes the audience think is:
"Didn't someone orchestrate this incident and then design the aftermath to improve relations with Japan?" while also portraying DJ as a massive victim of the era. The movie keeps pulling the narrative in this direction.
But where would such a staged event take place? The mastermind is effectively pointed toward the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency) throughout. And by showing the omnipotent KCIA of that time, the structure naturally leads the audience to imagine who was above them.
The Presidential Security Service Chief played by Um Tae-woong is also portrayed as a character hiding something massive. When Yoo Hae-jin goes to him to ask for the truth, he just beats him up and disappears. He doesn't explain anything, lol.
So, from the audience's perspective, they have no choice but to think, "Ah, this guy knows something. He's hiding something."
Furthermore, is it Kim Dae-myung? A successor reporter says something to the effect of, "They received compensation from Japan, worked behind the scenes through lobbying to build the subway, and only lined the pockets of Japanese companies. Does this make sense? That money should be returned to the people."
I burst out laughing here again. Lol. They should have spread the money around??
It even brings up the Declaration of Freedom of the Press, which is difficult to see as having a direct connection to the assassination of First Lady Yuk Young-soo. Naturally, the KCIA appears to suppress it and beats people up without any context, lol.
At the same time, Moon Se-gwang is depicted as an "ordinary person who was used" or a "victim used by someone." Lee Min-ho even goes to Japan to listen to stories from people around Moon Se-gwang, continuously pushing the idea that there is a separate mastermind.
In reality, there was no such story about reporters going all the way to Japan to track the mastermind of the incident.
Ultimately, it gives a very strong impression that Moon Se-gwang is not just a criminal, but "someone who was purely used by someone else."
The ending is the same.
A scene appears where someone who participated in the forensic investigation around 1989 says something to the effect of, "I don't know where the missing bullet went."
And an older Park Hae-il, Lee Min-ho, and Yoo Hae-jin—who became a security guard after being fired from the police following the incident—watch that broadcast.
After the movie ends like that, it immediately shows actual footage of the shooting,
and ends with subtitles such as:
"24 police officers were dismissed"
"Journalists were also fired due to the Declaration of Freedom of the Press, etc."
Are you telling me this movie has no intention?
I didn't see it that way at all.
I am not questioning the movie itself for adding imagination. If the mastermind had been the US, or Japan, or a completely fictional entity, I could have just seen it as a piece of cinematic imagination and moved on.
But this movie, from beginning to end, depicts the KCIA as a group that beats people up, oppresses, surveils, and tries to bury the truth of the incident using power.
On top of that, it gives off a nuance throughout the film that they weren't just covering up the incident, but were actually involved in the shooting itself.
Even so, I honestly cannot accept the interpretation that "the President might not have known, and it was portrayed as something done by subordinates on their own."
The structure created by the movie itself is directed toward naturally suspecting the pinnacle of power at the time, so I wonder if it can even be viewed separately.
Still, seeing many people point out issues after watching the movie, I thought, "Ah, everyone recognizes this kind of directorial intention," but I was absolutely shocked when I heard two women in their 50s or 60s sitting behind me talking after the movie ended.
"But why was Yoo Hae-jin fired from the police? That's so unfair... ㅜ ㅜ"
"Right. All of this is a fabrication. It must have been fabricated. Unbelievable."
That's how they were talking.
The moment I heard that, I thought, "Ah..."
I realized that even if a movie mixes fact and fiction and doesn't directly say "This is the truth," if it continuously plants suspicion in a specific direction through scene arrangement, dialogue, music, and cross-cutting, some people will actually accept it as historical fact.
So personally, I didn't feel like this movie was just a movie that added imagination to a historical event.
The intention was very clear, and I think the method of making the audience feel as if they reached the conclusion themselves, without stating the intention directly, was quite devious. That is the end of my review.