This whirling, churning, exhaustingly busy – but lavishly produced – Korean action-thriller film is directed by and stars Lee Jung-jae, who played the down-on-his-luck protagonist Seong in Squid Game. Although he’s been a big name for years in South Korea, starting out as a heartthrob in the 1990s, his current fame in the west probably explains why the film was selected for Cannes and other festivals this year. That means it’s available to audiences who probably won’t know the historical context vital to understanding the plot. It’s worth some pre-viewing brushing up on South Korea in 1983, when the film was set – the regime was deeply repressive at the time and the country was riven by internal protests, while tensions with North Korea were (literally) explosive.
If you keep all that in mind and think of this as a John Le Carré-style story, set in Asia and on speed, it makes a bit more sense. Lee plays Park Pyong-ho, the chief of the foreign unit of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), who is locked in a power struggle with his counterpart Kim Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung) from the domestic unit of the KCIA – especially after president Chun Doo-hwan is almost assassinated while visiting the United States. It turns out there is a North Korean mole operating within the KCIA, and both Park and Kim are assigned to head competing teams to find out who it is.
Some shocking twists go off like well-timed bombs in the back half of the film, somewhat compensating for what is, in all honesty, a bit of a slog. Lee himself is charismatic as ever, and as a director has a flair for the action, stunts and kinetic aspects of film-making. He seems less assured as a screenwriter, given what a muddle this turns out to be – crammed with incident and all just a bit too much.
• Hunt is released on 4 November in cinemas and on digital platforms.
