★ 7 / 10
Hunt is a fictionalised tale, based in a
MovieGuys
Hunt is a fictionalised tale, based in a very dark period, of South Korea's recent history. Superficially, Hunt is an espionage tale but, more than that, its…
Hunt is a fictionalised tale, based in a very dark period, of South Korea's recent history.
Superficially, Hunt is an espionage tale but, more than that, its true core theme, examines the price of becoming locked into a system that is cruel and dehumanising. In this case, a dictatorial, South Korean, military government, that came to power in the 1980's, off the back of a bloody coup d'etat.
The main characters, in their own way, try to minimise the suffering and death of ordinary people but the cycle is unbreakable and inevitably, any attempt to end suffering and death always leads to more. This is because the system of government itself, in North and South Korea, is broken and dictatorial.
There's a lot of pretty gut wrenching violence and scenes of torture, in this film. As participants, willing or otherwise, its impossible to like any of the main characters. That said, you can empathise with their efforts, to try and put an end to the soul destroying system, they find themselves trapped within.
In summary, well acted, unrelentingly cruel and violent, fast paced, with a sophisticated, underlying message, about the price of being part of a system of dehumanising tyranny.
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★ 6 / 10
Park" (director Lee Jung-Jae) and "Kim" (Jung Woo-sung)
CinemaSerf
"Park" (director Lee Jung-Jae) and "Kim" (Jung Woo-sung) run the foreign and domestic teams of the South Korean equivalent of the CIA when an attempt is made…
"Park" (director Lee Jung-Jae) and "Kim" (Jung Woo-sung) run the foreign and domestic teams of the South Korean equivalent of the CIA when an attempt is made to assassinate their President whilst on a trip to Washington DC. This politician came to power in a coup, in the 1980s, and he has no shortage of enemies. As the story develops, we discover that there is enormous pressure on these men to find out how the would-be killers knew so much about their boss's itinerary. Is there a mole - the legendary "Donglim", and could he/she have infiltrated their organisation? Pretty soon, a climate of fear and angry competition causes these two men to come to loggerheads as they try to detect the spy and keep their jobs, and they resort to ever more unscrupulous and violent means to achieve their goal before a summit in Bangkok. As is so often the case when an actor directs a film, the production can lack for an objective eye. The story really loses it's way once or twice as the investigations progress. I found it quite difficult to follow who was doing what to whom; who was on whose team and the pace was really quite sluggish at times. There is a great deal of dialogue but none of that really serves to build the characters into people in whom we could readily invest, and there are a couple of cluttering sub-plots that make little sense, or add much richness, until right at the very end. That ending has a twist that, though intriguing, is a bit contrived and I found rather implausible and I am afraid that I left the cinema underwhelmed.
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★ 6 / 10
Who is the traitor?
m-sileo
By the halfway point of this Korean spy thriller, I had completely lost track of who was the "good guy" and who was the "bad guy," though it seems this…
By the halfway point of this Korean spy thriller, I had completely lost track of who was the "good guy" and who was the "bad guy," though it seems this confusion might be intentional. The film is filled with men in suits, constantly second-guessing whether the armed person beside them is an ally or a potential enemy. This uncertainty is at the core of the story, but for non-Korean viewers, the exposition is muddled and poorly handled right from the start.The film barely provides any background on the sociopolitical context of the country, especially regarding the fraught history between North and South Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. This lack of explanation adds further narrative incoherence for viewers unfamiliar with Korea's political landscape. What could have been an opportunity to explore the long and complex relationship between the two Koreas instead becomes a missed chance due to the film's confusing structure.Its main weakness lies in its diffuse storytelling. The poorly defined time jumps make it hard to follow the timeline, and the constant betrayals and plot twists quickly become overwhelming, leaving the audience struggling to keep up. Without a clear narrative or context, the story falls flat, making it difficult to stay invested in the film's many twists and turns.
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•••
This movie is holding my breath, the struggled feelings between friends and country and the people and the betrayal.