Film

The Attorney

Name: The Attorney
Genre: History, Drama
Released: 2013
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Young-ae, Oh Dal-su, Yim Si-wan, Kwak Do-won

A South Korean lawyer with a failing practice defends a young man tortured by secret police during the 1981 Gwangju Uprising. Driven by conscience rather than ambition, he uncovers a conspiracy that forces him to choose between safety and justice. It's a gripping courtroom drama with real moral weight—tense, angry, and deeply human.

TMDb rating

3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a courtroom story where an ordinary man's self-interest slowly curdles into conviction, and where the history behind a case carries as much weight as the verdict.

Skip it if you find courtroom speeches and sentimental swells wearing, since at 127 minutes it is earnest, heavy and rarely lets its anger rest.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just over two hours of patient, grave material whose mood stays heavy for long stretches, so it wants steady attention rather than half-watching.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Spotlight2015

Journalists methodically uncover Catholic Church abuse over months of patient investigation. Like The Attorney, it shows integrity winning through procedure rather than heroics, with an ensemble cast where everyone matters.

But It's procedural and deliberately paced. If you need constant dramatic peaks, the quiet accumulation of evidence may feel slow.

A Man Apart2003

Vin Diesel plays a DEA agent who crosses ethical lines chasing a drug kingpin, then must face the consequences. Explores how the system corrupts those fighting for it—the moral opposite of The Attorney's arc.

But It's an action thriller with heavy-handed messaging. The philosophical questions get rougher treatment than the plot deserves.

Gomorrah2008

Naples mafia story told through interconnected lives, brutal and precise. Both films show how institutional corruption poisons everything it touches, with unflinching attention to how ordinary people navigate it.

But It's relentlessly bleak and violent. There's no redemptive arc, just damage spreading in all directions.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Attorney

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Battle of Algiers1966

Both films depict resistance to state violence through the eyes of protagonists who had to choose between complicity and risk. One uses courtroom law, one uses rebellion, but the moral framework is identical.

Gillo Pontecorvo's documentary-style account of the FLN's fight against French occupation. Structured exactly like The Attorney—a narrative about resistance to institutional violence—but from the guerrilla perspective, in another language, through another form of cinema.

But It's shot in grainy black-and-white with minimal music, in Italian and Arabic with subtitles. The pacing is austere and you may feel its political argument is one-sided.

Silkwood1983

Meryl Streep plays a nuclear plant worker fighting corporate negligence and government complicity. Another David-versus-Goliath story about one person's conscience colliding with systemic corruption.

But The pacing can feel loose, and some '80s filmmaking choices feel dated. It builds slowly toward its climax.

Z1969

Costa-Gavras masterpiece about investigating a political assassination in a fascist state. The template for The Attorney—a legal inquiry becomes an excavation of state violence and cover-up.

But It's a period piece from half a century ago in French and Greek. The editing style is propulsive but can feel mannered by modern standards.

Cry Freedom1987

A white journalist becomes radicalized by the murder of Steve Biko during apartheid South Africa. Shows how bearing witness to injustice demands moral action, even when it costs everything.

But It's earnest in a way that can read as self-congratulatory. The emotional beats sometimes overwhelm the political complexity.

The Trial of the Chicago 72020

Sorkin's courtroom drama about 1969 conspiracy charges against Vietnam War protesters. Fast, theatrical, angry—captures how courts can become arenas for political oppression rather than justice.

But Sorkin's style overwhelms substance for some viewers. The rapid-fire dialogue and music-video editing can feel exhausting rather than energizing.

Bicycle Thieves1948

Italian neorealism masterpiece: a poor man and his son search Rome for his stolen bicycle after WWII. Shows how ordinary people are crushed by systems that don't care, with devastating simplicity.

But Almost nothing external happens. If you need plot momentum or comfortable resolutions, this will frustrate you.

Stories We Tell2012

Both films are fundamentally about investigating truth in the face of official versions and silence. The Attorney uses the court; this uses family memory. Both ask: how do we know what really happened?

Michael Made's documentary about his family uncovering a shocking secret through interviews and old film. It's a legal inquiry of sorts—evidence gathering, testimony, discovering what really happened—but intimate and metameditative, a completely different formal approach.

But It's deliberately artificial about its artificiality, playing with how film constructs truth. If you want your documentary straightforward and your narrative clear, this deconstructs both.

Memories of Murder2003

Both examine South Korean state machinery in the 1980s, showing how power corrupts investigation itself. One fights the system in court; one shows how the system defeats itself from within.

Bong Joon-ho's serial killer investigation in 1980s South Korea becomes an anatomy of institutional failure and corruption. Another Korean film about the same era as The Attorney, but a genre film—procedural thriller rather than courtroom drama—showing how the system destroys evidence and truth.

But It's dark and frustrated, not redemptive. If you need The Attorney's catharsis or moral clarity, this film deliberately withholds it.