Hunt

Although Hunt was already in pro­duc­tion before the glob­al phe­nom­e­non pre­miered, Squid Game’s suc­cess looks set to ensure even more eyes pay atten­tion to the direc­to­r­i­al debut of that show’s star, Lee Jung-jae, who also co-leads this film. Luck­i­ly, Lee’s fea­ture should with­stand the extra scruti­ny, thanks to its qual­i­ties as a styl­ish, ener­getic espi­onage thriller exe­cut­ed with clear confidence.

The only lack of con­fi­dence comes behind the scenes. While the orig­i­nal cut of the movie that pre­miered out of com­pe­ti­tion at Cannes is what South Kore­an audi­ences got for their the­atri­cal release, Lee report­ed­ly re-edit­ed the film and revised cer­tain scenes for else­where, after a not insignif­i­cant amount of fes­ti­val reviews from inter­na­tion­al media found the Cannes cut too con­vo­lut­ed and vague regard­ing the Kore­an pol­i­tics of the 1980s setting.

This review comes from a posi­tion of hav­ing only seen the edit prepped for a West­ern release, where the signs of pos­si­ble extra ADR work are occa­sion­al­ly evi­dent. There’s an extent to which the intrigue can be slight­ly tricky to fol­low, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the first third, but any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly unclear at first is lat­er clar­i­fied all in due time. And part of that seems like a delib­er­ate fea­ture, giv­en how many indi­vid­u­als or groups of char­ac­ters are prone to shout­ing some vari­a­tion of ​“Who are you?” upon the arrival of new forces with unclear alle­giances. But this is ulti­mate­ly no hard­er to fol­low than John le Carré’s more pop­u­lar nov­els. In fact, Hunt actu­al­ly resem­bles Tin­ker Tai­lor Sol­dier Spy in some spots, if George Smi­ley was more prone to whip­ping out a gun and fir­ing while in search of a mole.

Set in 1983, the film’s imme­di­ate­ly atten­tion-grab­bing Wash­ing­ton-based pro­logue sees an attempt on the vis­it­ing South Kore­an president’s life foiled. Dur­ing the chaos, Park Pyong-ho (Lee), the For­eign Intel­li­gence Unit chief of the KCIA, is tak­en hostage by the sniper, but saved by the Domes­tic Unit chief, Kim Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung). The two men have a com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry. In a past job as a mil­i­tary offi­cer, Kim over­saw Park for 10 days when all KCIA agents were detained for ques­tion­ing after the assas­si­na­tion of the pre­vi­ous pres­i­dent in 1979.

Fol­low­ing the sniper inci­dent, the KCIA direc­tor informs the two men that there’s a North Kore­an mole with­in the agency, known as ​‘Donglim’. After a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort involv­ing the col­lec­tion of a North Kore­an defec­tor physi­cist goes awry, the men’s sep­a­rate teams begin inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions into track­ing down Donglim. Inevitably, the hunt becomes a bat­tle of wits between the two head-strong per­son­al­i­ties in charge, with Kim espe­cial­ly sus­pi­cious of Park’s strange bene­fac­tor sta­tus for the sup­posed daugh­ter (Go Yoon-jung) of a slain for­mer infor­mant for the KCIA.

Bol­stered by cre­ative action chore­og­ra­phy, Hunt remains light­ning-paced through­out, even while pil­ing twist upon twist. It’s clos­er to the mode of The Depart­ed than Infer­nal Affairs, in how blood-squib-heavy and oper­at­ic it gets, though the mes­meris­ing inten­si­ty of its duo fac­ing off is wor­thy of both those clas­sics of the mole-pur­suit subgenre.