Review: ‘Hunt’ (2022), starring Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung

March 11, 2023

by Carla Hay

Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung in “Hunt” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

“Hunt” (2022)

Directed by Lee Jung-jae

Korean with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place mainly in South Korea (and briefly in Washington, D.C., Japan, and Thailand), in 1983, the action film “Hunt” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) work together and clash with each other in their efforts to find a mole who has been leaking valuable information. 

Culture Audience: “Hunt” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and complex spy movies.

Lee Jung-jae in “Hunt” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

“Hunt” sometimes gets too convoluted for its own good, but it offers a mostly engaging mystery for viewers who have the attention span and interest to follow this twist-filled spy thriller that’s set in the 1980s. The movie has commendable acting and enough tension-filled action to keep viewers interested in what’s going to happen next. However, this movie is not going to have much appeal to viewers who want a more straightforward narrative in a spy movie.

Directed by Lee Jung-jae (who co-wrote the “Hunt” screenplay with Jo Seung-hee), “Hunt” has the tried-and-true spy movie plot of a rivalry between colleagues fueling much of the tensions and suspicions in the story. The movie takes place mostly in South Korea, in 1983, the same year that there was an assassination attempt South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan in real life. North Koreans airplane pilots were also defecting to other countries in record numbers in the 1980s. These historical facts are used in the context of “Hunt,” which is Lee’s feature-film debut as a director and writer. “Hunt” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

In “Hunt,” Lee portrays Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) Foreign Unit chief Park Pyong-ho, who often clashes with KCIA Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do (played by Jung Woo-sung), because each man thinks he is better than the other. Pyonh-ho has been with the KCIA for 13 years. Jung-do is a former military officer who is newer to the KCIA.

The movie’s opening scene takes place in Washington, D.C., where Pyong-ho and Jung-do have been assigned to the protection team for the South Korean president, who is visiting amid a storm of controversy. During the South Korean president’s arrival at a government event, there are local Korean American protestors outside the building who are angry over the how the return of military rule of the South Korean government.

Although the name of the South Korean president is not in the movie, this part of the movie’s plot is a reference to the real-life Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, when numerous people were killed over protesting military rule of South Korea. President-elect Chun Doo-hwan was largely blamed for this massacre. In the movie, some of the protesters have sign that call the South Korean president a “murderer.”

The head of the CIA’s East Asia unit, whose name is Director Gee (played by Paul Battle), has relayed information that there’s an assassination plot against the South Korean president that is expected to happen at this event. Pyong-ho is ordered to have his team on high alert. And sure enough, the assassination attempt happens, but Pyong-ho is able to thwart it by taking it upon himself to shoot and kill the assassin. Instead of praising Pyong-ho as a hero, Pyong-ho’s boss Director Kang (played Song Young-chang) scolds Pyong-ho for killing the suspect instead of wounding the suspect and taking the suspect into custody.

The investigation into this assassination attempt reveals that an unidentified mole with the code name Donglim is in the KCIA. It leads to Pyong-ho’s team and Jung-do’s team investigating each other. Early on, a economics professor named Shin Ki-Cheol, who was part of the delgation in Washington, is considered to be part of the assassination conspiracy. But is this professor really involved or just a scapegoat?

The people on Pyong-ho’s team include Bang Joo-kyung (played by Jeon Hye-jin) and Agent Yang (played by Jung Man-sik). Jung-do’s team includes Jang Cheol-seong (played by Heo Sung-tae). In between all this espionage intrigue, Pyong-ho has been tasked with protecting a slightly rebellious college student named Jo Yoo-jeong (played by Go Youn-jung), who unfortunately is a character that looks like a token female in this movie where the cast members with significant speaking roles are almost all men.

Under the direction of Lee, “Hunt” does a pretty good job of increasing the suspense, but at the expense of causing more confusion in the plot. The stakes get higher for the characters when Pyong-ho’s team and Jung-do’s team are each convinced that the mole is on the other team. Both teams also want to impress the newly appointed KCIA Director Ahn (played by Kim Jong-soo), who is an ex-military officer. Double-cross plots are uncovered. And the race to find out the identity of Donglim leads to uncovering more assassination plots that take some of the characters to Japan and Thailand.

Lee, who is best known as a star of the Netflix series “Squid Game,” performs admirably in the role of Pyong-ho, always leaving audiences guessing until a certain point in the movie how much Pyong-ho really knows about the Donglim the mole. Woo-sung does very well in his scenes when his Jung-do character has conflicts with Pyong-ho. Will these fierce rivals ever trust each other? And who is Donglim? The movie answers these questions in some ways that are less predictable than others. The last 20 minutes of “Hunt” are an adrenaline-packed knockout that achieves the intentions of “Hunt” to not have a typical ending for a spy movie.

Magnet Releasing released “Hunt” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on December 2, 2022. The movie was released in South Korea on August 10, 2022.

Review: ‘Remember’ (2022), starring Lee Sung-min and Nam Joo-hyuk

November 9, 2022

by Carla Hay

Lee Sung-min and Nam Joo-hyuk in “Remember” (Photo courtesy of 815 Pictures)

“Remember” (2022)

Directed by Lee Il-hyung

Korean with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in South Korea, the action film “Remember” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An 80-year-old man with a brain tumor and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease acts out a murderous revenge plan that he wants to complete before he dies. 

Culture Audience: “Remember” will appeal primarily to people interested in watching suspense thrillers about vendettas.

Lee Sung-min in “Remember” (Photo courtesy of 815 Pictures)

Some aspects of the action flick “Remember” are entirely predictable, but it’s still a suspenseful thrill ride with better-than-average acting. This story about revenge and terminal illness brings some freshness to its familiar ideas. “Remember” also has some commentary about the fallouts of colonialism and war, and how those repercussions can pass on through generations.

Written and directed by Lee Il-hyung, “Remember” (which takes place in an unnamed city in South Korea) is told from the perspective of 80-year-old Han Pil-Joo (played by Lee Sung-min), nicknamed Freddie, who at first seems to be a mild-mannered, friendly senior citizen. He works as a server at a T.G.I.F. restaurant. During the Christmas holiday season, he dresses up as Santa Claus and entertains the customers.

Pil-joo’s closest friend at his job is a cook in his 20s named In-gyu (played by Nam Joo-hyuk), who sees Pil-joo as a grandfather figure. In-gyu, a bachelor who lives alone, looks up to Pil-joo and sees Pil-joo as someone whom he can turn to for advice. During the course of the story, Pil-joo and In-gyu get caught up in a dangerous and deadly conspiracy where their trust in each other is tested.

Pil-joo has some big secrets that are eventually revealed in different parts of the story. As already shown in the movie’s trailer, one of his secrets is that he’s dying of a terminal illness: He has a brain tumor and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The other secret (also revealed in the “Remember” trailer) is that he has a plan to murder several people, one by one, as part of a revenge plan.

Pil-joo begins his revenge plan after his wife dies in a hospital from an unnamed illness. He has a secret collection of newspaper clippings and other information related to this revenge plan. Pil-joo is a veteran of the Vietnam War, but his vendetta has to do with Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 and 1945.

Why is Pil-Joo out for revenge? During Japan’s takeover of Korea, his family suffered devastating consequences. His father (a farmer in Yangju) was framed for a crime, arrested, tortured, and died while in custody. Pil-joo’s mother had a mental breakdown and was put in a psychiatric facility, where she died. Pil-joo’s brother was deceived by a friend and sentenced to a labor camp, where he died while working in a mine. Pil-joo’s sister was forced to be a sex slave for Japanese soldiers, and she eventually committed suicide.

Before he carries out his planned executions, Pil-joo films himself making a video stating that he has a brain tumor and Alzheimer’s disease. He also makes a statement explaining that the people he will murder are the people responsible for destroying his family. All of the people he wants to murder are elderly men who were directly involved in betraying or causing the downfall of Pil-joo’s now-deceased parents and siblings.

Because of his declining health, Pil-joo enlists an unsuspecting accomplice to these murders: his restaurant co-worker In-gyu. Pil-joo tells In-gyu that he will pay In-gyu to drive Pil-joo to certain locations, because Pil-joo says that he let his own driver’s license expire. Pil-joo also says that he has a “bucket list” of people he wants to visit before he dies.

The car they use isn’t exactly an anonymous-looking vehicle: It’s a red Porsche. It’s a somewhat ridiculous part of the movie that Pil-joo wants his getaway car to be something that’s easily identifiable. However, the movie gives somewhat of a plausible explanation.

When In-gyu asks how Pil-joo was able to afford a Porsche, Pil-joo says that the Porsche is actually an unregistered vehicle that can’t be traced back to him. In-gyu doesn’t ask why the vehicle is unregistered. In-gyu is just happy to be able to drive a Porsche.

The trailer for “Remember” already shows that Pil-joo carries out some of the killings, and In-gyu discovers the real reason why Pil-joo hired him to be Pil-joo’s driver. By the time that In-gyu finds out that he’s been an accomplice to murder, he’s in too deep. The police announce to the media that they have a blurry surveillance camera video and an eyewitness sighting of a young man at one of the murder scenes, so In-gyu becomes paranoid about being blamed for the murder because he fits the description.

In-gyu begs Pil-joo to turn himself in to the police, but Pil-joo refuses to do that until he kills everyone on his hit list. He assures In-gyu that when he turns himself in for the murders, he will do everything possible to not let In-gyu be blamed for the crimes. Pil-joo promises that he will tell the authorities that In-gyu was forced to help Pil-joo commit these murders. In-gyu has a big secret of his own that Pil-joo gets involved with and makes both In-gyu and Pil-joo a possible target to be killed.

Hot on the trail of solving these murders is a police detective named Kang Young-sik (played by Jung Man-sik), who is a smart and formidable opponent to Pil-joo. A retired and respected military veteran named Kim Chi-duk (played by Park Geun-hyung) is the biggest target on Pil-joo’s hit list. Pil-joo wants to save that murder for last.

What “Remember” lacks in originality it makes up for with a lot of tension-filled action and believable performances from the principal cast members. The movie puts forth questions about how sympathetic Pil-joo should really be, just because he’s elderly and dying. Lee’s portrayal of Pil-joo adeptly occupies that gray area of being neither a complete hero nor a complete villain.

Nam also gives a convincing performance as In-gyu, who becomes confused and terrified for most of the movie, but who is often Pil-joo’s only moral compass. “Remember” is not just a mindless film that shows people getting murdered. The movie also offers thoughtful messages about the emotional cost of holding grudges and how people who act out deadly revenge plans are usually hurting themselves too.

815 Pictures released “Remember” in select U.S. cinemas on November 4, 2022. The movie was released in South Korea on October 26, 2022.

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