World-weary detective falls for sphinx-like widow in a murder case. Talk about the usual suspects! We have seen this setup once or twice.
But “Decision to Leave,” director and co-writer Park Chan-wook’s dazzling, confounding, gorgeously crafted variation on a dangerously familiar film trope, takes its component parts and comes up with something no one has ever built before.
Visually it’s alive every second, in ways both considered and imaginative; the story, meanwhile, takes some risky wait-what? detours en route to a surprisingly grave finish. The South Korean genre master, whose films include the feverishly violent “Oldboy” and the ripely seductive “The Handmaiden,” hasn’t ditched either sex or violence for his latest film, co-written by his frequent collaborator Chung Seo-kyung. But both of those primal cinematic ingredients spice the result here in unexpected ways.
