Actor Lee Jung-jae exploits his rep as a second-wind Korean superstar as well as a bona fide global household name for Squid Game with a directoral debut that would be a challenge for even the most seasoned filmmaker. This espionage thriller, which takes place during one of the most politically fraught eras in postwar Korean history, is both narratively contorted and viscerally explosive, a combination that sometimes overshadows the subtler themes that would make it more interesting as a plot-driven puzzler. I emerged from it exhausted, though I’m not sure if it’s due to the excessively loud set pieces or the constant effort required to navigate the script’s twisty inertia. 

There are two protagonists, both of whom work for South Korean intelligence during its darkest days in 1983: Park Pyong-ho (Lee) who nominally handles domestic matters, and Kim Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung), whose brief is more international. During a visit to Washington, the South Korean president is targeted for assassination by a North Korean cell, and both Park and Kim get hell from their superiors for not being sufficiently prepared. During their dressing-down, we learn that the two have bad blood between them because Agent Park was suspected of being a party to the killing of President Park Chung-hee in 1979 and was subsequently tortured by Kim before being cleared. Water under the bridge in the always volatile world of Korean spycraft, but Park retains his resentment, which only intensifies, at least outwardly, when a North Korean would-be defector informs the South that the KCIA has a mole. The defector’s intelligence is confirmed when a covert operation goes sideways, since it’s obvious the North was tipped off. The viewer soon fixes on the idea that the mole is either Park or Kim, and as the movie moves fitfully from one shootout and/or knife fight to the next and bodies pile up the focus of suspicion shifts several times between the two men. What keeps the central story sharp is the notion that both men don’t really like what they’re doing, which is carry out the nefarious anti-democratic policies of the regime they serve, and after a while there’s a sense that there isn’t much difference between the North and the South in terms of maintaining ultimate power by using any means necessary. Though the “hunt” of the title refers to finding out who the mole is, it also pertains to the two men’s respective search for a way to make their actions morally and ethically right in their heads, a theme that becomes more compelling as the movie progresses but is nonetheless buried under the intensifying mayhem. 

Consequently, several interesting subplots—one about a shadowy manufacturer that deals in under-the-table weapons trades, another about a female student with anti-government leanings who seems to be Park’s ward—are rendered murky while the general image of the KCIA that develops is one of a self-important team of bullies who suck at their job. This latter aspect is best characterized by three-count-’em-three ultra-violent incidents that occur in foreign countries—the U.S., Japan, and Thailand—any one of which would have been as historically significant as 911 had they really happened. There is no title card saying that Hunt is based on a true story, but in any case even if you know how deadly and oppressive the South Korean dictatorship was in the 80s, it could never have been this bad.

In Korean, English, Japanese and Thai. Opens Sept. 29 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955).

Hunt home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Megabox Joongang Plus M, Artist Studio & Sanai Pictures