Michael's Movie Grade: B+
An excellent Korean action movie.
This film takes a basic action movie premise and turns it into a very fun thrill ride. The action here moves at a very fast pace and never lets go and when the film is over you can't believe over an hour and a half has passed. Much of what makes this film work though is our protagonist himself (played wonderfully by Jang Hyuk). He is simply the coolest action movie hero this side of John Wick. After all how can you not love an action hero who kills plenty of bad guys all while calmly enjoying his coffee. At every turn he always seems to know just what to do next and is one step ahead of the bad guys every step of the way. Beyond just being incredibly cool though he is very likable and under his tough extior he really does have a good heart. The scenes with him and the teenage girl he is taking care of (Seo-young Lee) are quite well done and while I don't this film will make anybody tear up, they do bring an emotion resonance to this often over the top action movie. Of course in a movie like this all this would be for nothing if the action scenes weren't good. Luckily these action scenes are fantastic. They are perfectly shot, staged, choreographed and paced. Most of all though they are very exciting and keep your eyes glued to the screen. While they are very violent, they are done in such a stylish way that this ends up adding to instead of distracting from the fun. The movie also has a good sense of humor and never takes itself too seriously to lose its sense of fun or becomes too silly to take away from the characters or story.
On the downside as wonderful as our two main characters are, the rest of the characters are simply not that interesting and the film lacks a strong central villain.
Overall this is simply a great action movie and if you are an action fan you should definitely see it.
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