Hunt review: Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae made one hell of an action movie

South Korean Action Movie Hunt This isn’t comedy. It’s a bloody spy movie with deadly stakes, full of bloody conflict and grotesque torture. The stellar action sequences make it clear that nobody in this political face-off is having fun — all the main players are powered by self-righteous conviction that only they can save their country and their government, and any atrocities they commit in pursuit of that goal are valid and justified.

But there’s still a sense of wry humor to the way it all goes down, as the back-and-forth conflict between factions gets so convoluted that even the agents showing up at the site of the latest conflict don’t always seem to know what side they’re on. Squid Game Lee Jung-jae stars in the film and is his directorial debut. It’s a deadly game played by paranoid, violent people. But the movie’s strongest moments come when the action gets so ridiculous that the audience almost has to laugh, even as they’re wondering who’s going to die next.

Lee stars as Park Pyong-ho, the chief of the KCIA Foreign Unit, South Korea’s overseas intelligence agency. Chief Kim Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung) is his counterpart, the head of the KCIA’s Domestic Unit. The two men share common goals, and they are working together in order to save their president, a cruel dictator who has been criticized for his brutality. Film is set during a fictionalized 1980s period that reflects a time of unrest and rebellion. When an assassin targets the president during a visit to Washington, D.C., Park and Kim are told there’s a North Korean mole somewhere in the KCIA, and they each launch a separate investigation to track down the traitor.

The plot gets so convoluted that it’s difficult to follow at times, particularly during the extremely fast-paced and action-oriented early going, when each new revelation, development, and shifting suspicion sends swarms of functionally identical black-suited KCIA agents into conflict. As the KCIA attempts to control the system, its leaders and two of the suspects, the agency turns against itself.

At times, the crisis of the moment doesn’t seem any more specifically important than the McGuffin the characters are chasing in any particular sequence of a Star Wars movie. Each new development — a botched North Korean infiltration, multiple defectors, KCIA leadership changes, a key witness in a coma, a suspicious company laundering money — mostly serves as an excuse for Kim and Park to make new moves and refine their theories about who’s to blame. However, as Hunt It becomes clear that the story is a cat-and mouse game between these two men. As they accuse and find evidence, the stakes become more and more personal. It all starts as a joyful celebration, almost almost joyous. UntouchablesOperatic violence of the opera style is transformed into bitter spy drama that reveals how far people will go to defend their convictions.

This movie is best seen as an action film. Hunt is one of 2022’s most exciting and horrifying experiences. Lee uses that early assassination attempt as a calling card to establish his credentials as a choreographer of gunplay, assuring the audience that they’re in capable and ambitious hands. As both sides do terrible things in the name truth, it becomes a tug-of-war between suspicions and sympathies throughout the movie. The film takes it as a given that there’s no justice to be found in a dictatorship, and that citizens are likely to be arrested, tortured, and possibly murdered on thin suspicions, or for sheer political expediency. It’s a bitter take on the spy story, one where wish-fulfillment heroism doesn’t have much place, and there are no swaggering James Bonds — just bloody-handed functionaries jockeying for survival. Lee plays the excitement role, but keeps coming back to remind us of the human costs.

Magnet Releasing

However, the final result is not what you would expect. Hunt has also turned into an impressive drama and character piece — one where the emotions are outsized, exaggerated, and expressed through explosions as much as through dialogue, but still a story more about people than regimes. Lee, playing a grimly controlled leader who’s miles away from his shaggy-haired Squid Game Seong Gi-hun is a sad, naive man who keeps all his cards close. But as his options shrink, Seong Gi-hun’s desperation and conviction begin to leak. Jung is a perfect match for him as Kim, a more volatile character who’s more willing to sacrifice his humanity for expediency, but still driven by belief.

A part of the reason we are here Hunt work is that it doesn’t entirely choose between them. This isn’t a simple good-guy/bad-guy story: It’s about the limited choices in a fascist regime, for citizens and enforcers alike, and about the extremes it drives them to. Each man is a rat in the trap of looking for any possible escape route. It turns them against each other, but also makes them alike in more ways than they’d want to admit. It’s intense and engaging. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the results. This film will appeal to fans of action movies and espionage dramas. HuntThis is an absolute must-see. It is a very different tone from the original. Squid Game, but it’s just as much a murderous battle for supremacy where the outcome is never obvious.

HuntThe film has a limited theatrical release. You can stream it on Netflix. Amazon,VuduOther digital outlets.