Fairly quickly, you realize something strange is happening in Montage: After young Detective Cha (Oh Dae-hwan) informs still-grieving mother Ha-kyung (Uhm Junghwa) that the statute of limitations around the murder of her child is slated to run out in five days, instead of sequeing into a suspenseful countdown, the movie leaps forward to "nine hours left." Given that this jump happens well before the halfway point, we're relatively assured that something else is afoot besides the solving of a 15-year-old homicide. What is it? A second crime, dear reader. A second crime that mirrors the first! So is the original killer back for more mayhem or has a copycat (perhaps within the police force) emerged to take his place. And what does this all have to do with grandpa (Song Young-chang)?
The force's retired cynic (Kim Sang-kyung) would like to find out more than anyone else but since he's no longer paired with his initial sidekick (Oh), Montage loses some really great opening chemistry. In its place, we're left with an echo chamber of screaming. Screams of grief, screams of anger, screams of frustration, screams of rebellion, screams of justice unfulfilled, and screams of indignation. Strangely, Bom (Heo Jung-eun), the kidnapped girl at the center of this story, doesn't scream that much. In Montage, the screaming is left to the adults. You may scream too at how this movie resolves itself. Unless you turn the screams into a drinking game, in which case you may think this film is a scream.
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