“The Hunt” Theatrical Poster
Director: Lee Woo-Chul
Cast: Ahn Sung-Ki, Cho Jin-Woong, Han Ye-Ri, Kwon Yool, Park Byung-Eun, Han Jae-Young, Kim Yoon-Sung, Jo Dae-Hee, Cha Soon-Bae, Shim Yi-Young
Running Time: 93 min.
By Paul Bramhall
The Hunt opens with a scene of a frail elderly lady approaching a long-deserted mine entrance located up a secluded mountain, the torrential rain setting an ominous tone as she lays out a numbering of offerings to the dead. The camera watches the ritual from the darkness of the tunnel, as ghostly groans emanate from somewhere in the unseen depths, indicating a restless spirit that perhaps met an untimely death and still seeks revenge. The horror genre leanings of the scene are understandable when you realise the director at the helm is Lee Woo-cheol, who gave us the 2005 ghostly horror Cello. It’s taken Woo-cheol 11 years to deliver his sophomore feature, and while what he’s spent those years doing is likely to remain as bigger a mystery as the ghostly happenings of his debut, the important thing is he’s back.
However the unsettling tone of the opening scene doesn’t last any further, with a lightning strike hitting the side of the mountain near to the mine entrance revealing what appears to be gold. After contacting the local police, a cop played by Cho Jin-woong (Me and Me, Believer) confirms to the lady that it’s just pyrite, or fool’s gold as its more popularly known. Of course, in truth it’s the real deal, and Jin-woong turns out to not exactly be a the most morally upstanding cop on the force. Playing dual roles, he contacts his shady twin brother to extract the gold, who in turn gathers 5 of his hunter friends to trek up the mountain with him on the anniversary of the mining accident that shut it down, using the bad weather as an excuse to close it to the public.
What was supposed to be an easy job done with no one around soon starts to derail though when the elderly lady turns up, revealing the land they’re on belongs to her deceased son, and proceedings are confounded further by the arrival of her mentally disabled granddaughter, played by Han Ye-ri (Minari, Champion). As greed pushes Jin-woong to do the unthinkable, they’re interrupted by the arrival of the legendary Ang Sung-ki (The Divine Fury, White Badge), playing one of the only surviving members from the mining accident, he’s on the mountain to pay his respects on its anniversary, and senses something fishy. So sets up the basic premise of The Hunt – a character in his twilight days finds himself facing off against a group of heavily armed hunters on a mountain.
Korea doesn’t really have the same market for DTV action that the US has, a genre which has been populated by no nonsense, straight forward mid-budget action flicks since the 90’s. However, if it did, it’s easy to imagine that The Hunt would be classed as one of them. Sung-ki, who at this point in his career had featured in more than 160 movies since his debut as a child actor in 1957’s The Twilight Train, was 64 at the time of The Hunt’s release, joining the ranks of senior action star royalty that Liam Neeson presides over. Armed with only an air rifle and a backpack carrying the essentials (this being Korea, a bottle of soju is one of them), Sung-ki makes for a likeable protagonist to rally for, and lends any production he appears in an air of class that it wouldn’t have without him.
It’s just as well, as director Woo-cheol seems unsure of himself behind the camera, apparently unable to get a grasp on how to convey the logistics of the mountain and indeed, sometimes basic logic itself. Sung-ki’s familiarity with the mountain gives him an advantage over the hunters, however the advantage is frequently stretched to beyond believability. In one sequence he tells Ye-ri to make a run for it so she can alert the police (the good ones) in town since there’s no phone signal on the mountain. Afterwards a whole bunch of events take place, however when a couple of the hunters are ordered to catch up to Ye-ri and make sure she doesn’t make it off the mountain, Sung-ki is somehow able to intercept them, implying either she didn’t get very far, or he can run faster than the Roadrunner.
Indeed a lot of The Hunt involves Sung-ki running, even when it’s not always clear where he’s running to. In one sequence he’s being pursued by the hunters, and out of nowhere he’s suddenly hiding behind a rock on the opposite side of a stream, providing a thrilling environment for a shootout to take place from either side. However the question of how he got there is never addressed, which would have seen him needing to wade through the stream to get to the other side, during which time the hunters were in close enough pursuit that he would have been an easy target. Action movies often ask us to suspend disbelief or even switch our brains off at the door, both of which I’m ok with, but Woo-cheol shoots proceedings with a level of grounded seriousness which implies some degree of logic be applied to basic things like how a character gets from point A to point B.
Instead it feels like we’re expected to be content with the sight of an actor of Sung-ki’s stature running around a mountain like a senior version of Rambo (who’s influence is enough to get name checked, as well as Deliverance), and blasting away with a shotgun. To a degree The Hunt gets away with it, as it actually is good fun watching Sung-ki take out the hunters one by one (although I should put a caveat here that he doesn’t get rid of all of them), however this in and of itself isn’t enough to call it a good movie. As his main adversary Jin-woong often seems perplexed as to why he’s playing twins, a feeling that the audience will likely be able to relate to, as it has precisely zero bearing on the plot. Perhaps his fee for appearing was so high Woo-cheol decided to make the most of him and gave him 2 roles, or he just wanted more screen time, but either way it’s definitely one of the odder usage of the twins character trope used in film.
Had The Hunt stuck to its core premise of being a mountain set chase flick, I admit that it would have been a serviceable if distinctly average action thriller, however the narrative frequently resorts to throwing in flashbacks to the mining accident and the events that surrounded it. Despite the simple setup of the present-day plot, Woo-cheol manages to make the flashbacks needlessly complicated as they attempt to flesh out the tragic backstory behind Sung-ki and Ye-ri’s father, who he worked with in the mine. These scenes fall victim to what I like to call Crimes of Korean Cinema #64 – the descent into a melodramatic finale (see also my review of The 8th Night for another guilty verdict of said crime), as we learn how Sung-ki feels responsible for her father’s death, and has been beating himself up for it ever since.
The flashbacks further cast questions over exactly what kind of movie Woo-cheol thought he was looking to create in the first place. Is it a straight up action flick set on the mountain? It is the story of a man coming to terms with his past? Is it a drama about the dangers of human greed? The answer is that it doesn’t deliver any of them convincingly, instead offering up half baked attempts that mildly touch on each one, rather than choosing one theme and committing to it. There’s a lean mean little action thriller lurking somewhere in The Hunt’s admittedly welcome short 90-minute runtime, but it feels smothered by the attempts to be something more.
In the end The Hunt ultimately remains watchable because of Sung-ki’s presence, proving to be a classic case of a mediocre director leveraging the talent in front of camera to keep things afloat. If you’re a fan of the cast then The Hunt comes with a tentative recommendation, with everyone clocking in solid performances in an attempt to elevate proceedings. If you’re clocking in hoping for a gripping thriller set on a mountain, then do yourself a favour and check out the far more entertaining Savage which came out a couple of years later.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10
Hmm. It seems like this movie had a lot of potential. The concept is like a combination of A Simple Plan and Cliffhanger. I haven’t seen Savage yet, but it sounds like The Hunt could have been like it.
I thought it was interesting that the group of hunters–excepting the twins–did not start out with dishonest intentions.
If this had been an American movie, instead of the hunter group being a collection of regular white collar types, they all would have been ex-military, or thugs, and been fully aware that there was going to be need of using their weapons. Likewise, the protagonist would have been a badass outdoorsman, and the girl somehow gifted.
Instead, we see a group of regular guys pushed into commiting murder, and then willingly covering it up to nawe their own asses.
While I didn’t like the film for the reasons you stated Paul, I thought making all the characters normal was a better choice than would have been made in Hollywood.