This film wins a place in the Wise International All-Time List of Uneven Movies. It’s extremely uneven. A man purporting to be a famous serial killer comes out in the open after the statute of limitation expires (this is South Korea), writes a bestseller based on the crimes and taunts the detective who had been investigating the case. There were several moments that I thought, wow, this is a really good move. And there were moments of cringing in which I thought, man, this must be one of the silliest movies I’ve ever seen. The story itself is actually very good and compelling, unlike most action movies in which the drama is subservient to the action. But some of the action scenes are so crazy and out there that it takes away from the realism of the core story. I mean, really, a deadly snake leaps in the air at night and gets sliced in half by a flying arrow; come on. And the stunts are so extreme that it’s a miracle five stuntmen didn’t die during the making of this movie. On top of that, you have the extremely annoying shaky-camera technique that doesn’t allow you to see those stunts in all their glory because the camera is moving too much. If the action had been more realistic, the camera steady and the occasional silliness put aside, this could have been a great movie. Still, the story is highly engrossing and some of the actors are extremely good; these elements pull the film out of the trash bin of Unwise Movies where it could have been and make it watchable.

Not For Kids
Korean with English sub-titles

Extra:

• A member of the Wise Film Choices Team, my lovely and wonderful wife, had a slightly different opinion that I shall include here. We both liked the movie just as much, but she had a higher estimation of the quality of the movie than I did. She felt that the movie got silly sometimes but then fixed itself. So I upped the movie a few percentage points (4% to be exact) based on this input.