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CROSSING THE LINE
Directed by: Daniel Gordon.
Produced by: Nicholas Bonner & Gordon.
Director of Photography: Nick Bennett.
Edited by: Peter Haddon.
Music by: Craig Armstrong.
Released by: Kino International.
Country of Origin: UK/USA. 94 min. Not Rated.
Narrated by: Christian Slater.

James Joseph Dresnok has the unusual distinction of being the last man standing among four American defectors to North Korea. All were high school dropouts from broken homes, and together they became poster boys for the Communist state. (Don’t expect overtones of The Manchurian Candidate intrigue; the reason for Dresnok’s 1962 defection is more prosaic than political.) Director Daniel Gordon hits a goldmine with scenes from the campy black-and-white 1978 propaganda film Nameless Heroes, which featured the four men as evil Westerners. The 20-part film was directed by the country’s current ruler, Kim Jong Il.

Considering the regime has provided Dresnok with housing and food, even during the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of North Koreans were estimated to have starved, Dresnok, who still speaks with his native Virginian drawl, toes the party line. In his 2005 interviews, there’s a sense that certain areas are off-limits, though only once does a government official interrupt an interview. But with blotchy skin (probably the result of his fondness for Jack Daniels) and incessant smoking, the towering and hulking minor celebrity has lost his glow but not his admiration for his adopted country.

But the case of his fellow defector Charles Jenkins, who married a Japanese national who had been kidnapped and taken to North Korea, steals the focus from Dresnok. How Jenkins married a woman half his age, one brought to the country against her will, is not addressed here. The strange affair received enormous Japanese press coverage and even landed Jenkins on the cover of TIME. Released earlier this year, the documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story covered a similar incident. North Korea has admitted that 13 Japanese citizens were abducted in order to teach the Japanese language and customs for North Korea’s spy program.

Though Dresnok acknowledges that Jenkins’ wife was kidnapped, he doesn’t quite clear the air regarding the nationality of his first and now-deceased wife, but denies the charge that she was brought from Romania involuntarily. Mysteriously, he doesn’t produce a photo of her. Allegedly, North Korea breeds foreign-born nationals with other foreigners to produce children who could serve as spies. Jenkins’ blond son does, in fact, attend Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies and is studying English. Now here’s your real-life Cold War intrigue. Kent Turner
August 10, 2007