When I heard Squid Game actor Lee Jung-jae was making his directorial debut, I was curious to see whether he would make a serious, emotionally overpowering drama or a thriller. Having seen what he has done in his maiden feature, Hunt, I can report that the answer is the latter. I must also say I was amazed because Hunt feels like the work of someone with enough directing experience under his belt.
Set in the 80s against the backdrop of the North Korea-South Korea tensions, Hunt is an espionage thriller loaded with many nail-biting scenarios, considering it revolves around the operations of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA—now known as the National Intelligence Service). Lee Jung-jae is Park Pyong-ho, the chief of the foreign unit of KCIA, and Jung Woo-sung is Kim Jung-do, head of the domestic one.
There is no question of Jung-jae’s skills as a filmmaker as he sure knows how to hook us: a mere five minutes into the film, we get an assassination attempt followed immediately by a wild shootout. This prologue also gives us a sense of the underlying tension in the Park-Kim dynamic, which worsens as the film progresses, ultimately getting to a point where the two get into a high-intensity fistfight, the details of which fall under the spoilers section.
At least three fiery gun battles had me going, ‘Wow!’ Hunt is restless from the get-go. While not throwing its characters into gunfights and explosions, it pauses for office politics and spy games. But these are just short intervals —too brief that you yearn for some breathing space to ponder the complex behind-the-scene machinations before moving on to the following action setpiece.
However, it’s also admirable that these sequences bring forth new plot revelations instead of existing just for the sake of spectacle. It produces the cumulative effect of watching an offspring of The Departed and The Bourne Ultimatum. Or imagine the high moments of a Christopher Nolan thriller—say, the opera sequence of Tenet or the SWAT ambush in The Dark Knight— dialled up to a hundred, complete with a rousing background score.
But Hunt is also that film which, despite its placement against the backdrop of Korean and U.S political games, asks you to suspend your disbelief in multiple places. There are instances where I wondered why the agents of a powerful intelligence organisation didn’t take safety precautions before running into gunfire. Perhaps this was an intentional creative choice to increase the body count—and Hunt registers a large number in that department.
Moreover, as someone with only a rudimentary understanding of Korean history, I wondered whether the makers followed the details of actual events to a T or whether they had opted for some creative liberties. I believe the latter is the case. After all, this is a work of entertainment, and Hunt delivers that in spades.
With a film like this, occasional doubts are natural when the pacing is relentless—the screenplay hops furiously from one plot development to another. One also questions the inclusions of a few last-minute twists that, while succeeding at catching you off guard, seem like afterthoughts. But these are minor shortcomings in an otherwise well-made film, even if everything doesn’t always make sense.
With the number of characters and events populating the film, all complimented by hyperkinetic camera work, Hunt often feels like an epic war movie. We get gun battles that rival those in a Michael Mann film or any Johnnie To thriller in terms of the pure exhilaration they offer.
It also succeeds remarkably at creating the same sense of urgency we saw in the first three Jason Bourne films, particularly Ultimatum. I was surprised that the film managed introspective moments between the onslaught of all the chaos and mayhem.
It helps to have talented actors like Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung in the forefront because they sell their characters’ angst, confusion, and rage so well. Hunt is, for me, one of the best action thrillers of the year, warts and all.
Film: Hunt
Director: Lee Jung-jae
Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Jung Woo-sung, Jeon Hye-jin, Heo Sung-tae
Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video
Rating: 3.5/5