Lee Jung Jae, the Emmy Award-winning star of “Squid Game,” stars in and directs Hunt, a South Korean spy action thriller set in the 1980s during a turbulent period in South Korean history. The country was under a military dictatorship, people were fighting for freedom and democracy, and tensions between North and South Korea were high.
Hunt begins with an assassination attempt on South Korea’s dictator President in Washington. Soon after, it is unearthed that a spy known as Donglim is operating within South Korea’s top intelligence agency, KCIA, and passing top-secret information to the North Koreans. Park Pyong Ho (Lee Jung Jae), the head of the KCIA’s foreign unit, and Kim Jung do (Jung Woo Sung), the agency’s domestic unit head, are pitted against each other by the chief of KCIA, who orders them to investigate each other’s units for the spy. Kim learns that Park has been protecting a young girl named Jo Yu Jeong (Go Yoon Jung), a North Korean defector disguised as a South Korean student, making Park a prime suspect in Kim’s eyes. On the other hand, Park discovers Kim’s business dealings with Jupiter Corporation, a supplier of military ammunition, making Park suspicious of Kim’s involvement in supplying weapons to people seeking to assassinate the country’s President. They are both convinced that the other is a spy.
The best part about the movie is when Park and Kim are investigating each other. A cold war is brewing between the two within the department. During the phase in which they are digging up dirt against each other, the pendulum of ‘who Donglim is’ swings constantly from Park’s side to Kim’s side. The movie also contains thrilling action sequences, particularly one in which Park and his team travel to Japan to meet with an exiled North Korean nuclear physicist and transport him to South Korea in exchange for information on Donglim. The plan fails miserably, resulting in a shootout in the middle of the road reminiscent of Michael Mann’s famous shootout scene in Heat (1995).
Although Park and Kim have clear objectives, their characterizations felt weak and monotonous because nothing was intriguing about them. Furthermore, the film’s climax falls flat because Park’s character is sacrificed for some last-second thrills. The actions he takes, in the end, do not reflect what we see of him throughout the movie because a new trait is added to his character that was not introduced or hinted at earlier. As a result, his actions felt unjustified in the end, leading to a weak and illogical climax.
The movie moves at a frenetic pace because of the fast-paced editing, but this can be difficult at times because the audience might find it difficult to follow the convoluted plot that includes a lot of exposition and new character names thrown around haphazardly. But Hunt is still a fun ride and a must-see for fans of the spy genre. Lee Jung Jae makes an impressive directorial debut as someone who appears to have a good eye for action. I cannot wait to see what he does next.
Hunt movie link: IMDB
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