Daishi Matsunaga on moving from film to Prime Video thriller ‘Criminal’ and unlocking Jung Il-woo’s potential

After a decade working in film, director Daishi Matsunaga makes his first foray into television with the mystery thriller “Criminal." The best compliment he has received since the series premiered on Amazon's Prime Video earlier this month, he says, is that it is “not a series you can watch while doing something else.”

“A series is divided into episodes, and viewers can pause or stop watching at any time, so I thought a great deal about how to approach the format,” Matsunaga said at a press conference in Seoul on Thursday. “In the end, I decided that the best way to engage viewers was simply to trust them and focus on making a good work.”

“Many viewers said they had to stop whatever they were doing and give the drama their full attention,” he added.

Related Article

• Jung Il-woo signs with G-Dragon's agency Galaxy Corporation

“Criminal,” adapted from Ai Ota’s 2012 novel of the same name, follows three people who would otherwise never have crossed paths — a detective, a journalist and a survivor — as their separate investigations into the same murder case lead them to a larger conspiracy.

The seven-episode crime thriller debuted globally on Prime Video on July 17 and has held the top spot in Japan for three consecutive weeks.

“What drew me to the original novel was its central question: Who is the real criminal, and who gets to decide?” Matsunaga said. “There are many criminals in this story. Of course, crime cannot be condoned in a society governed by law, but the work also asks whether the very idea of justice can become a form of violence when different notions of what is right collide. I hope that message comes through to viewers.” 

The director made his feature directorial debut with "Pyuupiru 2001-2008" (2011), a documentary about the artist Pyuupiru’s exploration of her identity and later gender-affirming surgery. His fictional feature debut came in 2015 with the romance teen drama "Pietà in the Toilet" and is also known for films like the queer romance "Egoist" (2022).

Jung Il-woo makes his Japanese debut in the series as Takigawa, a character who was originally Japanese in the novel but was rewritten as Korean for the adaptation. To make the character’s background more convincing, Jung brought several culturally specific ideas to the set.

“In the novel, Takigawa squeezes a massage ball when he is deep in thought, but in Korea, older people often roll walnuts in their hands for acupressure,” Jung said. “The sound of the walnuts knocking together could also be quite frightening, so [the director] thought it was a very good idea."

Jung also wore the combat boots he had used during his military service, imagining that the assassin may have been recruited from a Korean special forces unit.

Matsunaga said he cast Jung because he sensed greater potential in the actor beyond what he had shown in “Highway Family" (2022), a family drama in which Jung played the husband of Ra Mi-ran’s character.

“I place great importance on the impression I get when I meet an actor in person, even more than their previous work,” Matsunaga said. “After meeting Jung and then watching ‘Highway Family,’ I became convinced that there was much more he could show. I wanted to draw out that potential.”

“Jung has a great deal of personal charm, but when I work with an actor, I set that aside and focus on what kinds of challenges we can take on, both in the performance and in the work itself,” Matsunaga said. “Despite his long career, I was struck by the tremendous passion he still brings to acting, and I was very pleased to see that.”

“In Japan, I am sometimes described as a director who draws out new or unexpected sides of actors, so I am very curious to know what new side of Jung viewers discovered through this series," he added.

BY KIM JU-YEON [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]