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Korean suspenser 'The Target' changing the game
Remake: South Korean high-octane thriller The Target follows an action-flick formula familiar to Asian viewers, with its scattershot plot and emotionally touching scenes that all eventually tie in at the end
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Remake: South Korean high-octane thriller The Target follows an action-flick formula familiar to Asian viewers, with its scattershot plot and emotionally touching scenes that all eventually tie in at the end. (Courtesy of CJ Entertainment) (Courtesy of CJ Entertainment)
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span class="inline inline-none">Remake: South Korean high-octane thriller The Target follows an action-flick formula familiar to Asian viewers, with its scattershot plot and emotionally touching scenes that all eventually tie in at the end. (Courtesy of CJ Entertainment)
What could be worse than being tangled in a mafia-backed crime? A lot of things could happen, especially when you have a battle-tested soldier on the wrong end of a long chase spanning 36 hours.
South Korean high-octane thriller The Target follows the action flick formula familiar to Asian viewers with its scattershot plot and emotionally touching scenes that all eventually tie in at the end.
Now that all eyes are on Asian action movies, with Gareth Evans' The Raid movies at the forefront, The Target serves as an anomaly in the genre.
It's a remake of Fred Cavaye's Gallic thriller Point Blank released in 2010 (The French title is à Bout Portant, not the 1960s gangster classic) that is transposed East.
The film's plot, cast, martial art artists and the techies made the movie slightly different from the original, if not better.
Even Cavaye was said to be impressed with the work of uni-named director Chang when it was screened at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
The movie opens with a nocturnal chase that leads to a man getting shot and hit by a car. The hospital's resident, Lee Tae-joon (Lee Jin-wook), saves the man in the emergency room and once again when an assassin cuts the lines keeping him alive.
When the doctor arrives home to his heavily pregnant wife Hee-joo (Jo Yeo-jeong) ' a psychiatrist at the hospital ' he gets knocked unconscious and finds when he wakes that someone has taken his wife hostage in exchange for the comatose man.
It is later revealed that the comatose patient is a former soldier assigned to the special forces for Kalimantan, East Timor, Malaysia and Bangladesh named Baek Yeo-hoon (Ryu Seung-ryong). Upon retirement he worked as a mercenary.
But the homicide police are already involved as Baek is found near the location of a murder. Lee and Baek form an unlikely partnership to get his wife back and get to the root of the matter, while the police and the assassins are close on their tails.
The police force have pivotal roles in the film as shown by tough female cop Jung Young-joo (Kim Sung-ryung) and her junior Soo-jin (Cho Eun-ji), as well as special unit chief Song Gi-cheol (Yoo Jun-sang) ' who are always overriding the operation.
Another character with no antecedent in the original version is Baek's younger brother, Sung-hoon (Jin Go), a Tourette-suffering petty criminal on probation.
The chase and the close-quarter fight scenes ' outstanding taekwondo choreography here ' take place beat by beat, leaving no room for a breather in between set pieces. But somehow the story keeps the audience on their toes.
'If no one gets hurt, it will be boring,' said the psychotic archvillain, whose solid acting resonates.
The Target was full of surprises and was emotionally moving.
Let's see how Mark Wahlberg's Leverage team does the movie's Hollywood remake.
The Target
Director: Chang
Producer: CJ Entertainment
Cast: Ryu Seung-ryong, Lee Jin-wook, Jo Yeo-jong, Kim Sung-ryung, Yoo Jun-sang, Jin Go
Runtime: 98 minutes
Rating: R
Language: Korean, English subtitles
