Time to snooze
After watching a couple of great Korean films, ‘Time to Hunt’ was a disaster. Beginning with a plan for heist, I thought that’s what the film was all about but the heist happens only for five minutes. Post that its just a one vs three hunt on road. The heist was too easy to happy and the hunt was too boring to see. Together it ended up being a snooze fest, only to be got up by the noise, or may I say, music, of bullets, because that’s the only thing which chimed with the rhyme of the film. Otherwise it was a blatant disaster.
The setting of the film is dystopian, making us wonder why. Maybe they wanted to negate the extra cost needed for the extras and also to not worry about the logic because in a dystopian world no one worries about who kills whom. So, the setting is convenient for them and they blast away in the entire film. I’d have been happy if they had at least stuck to the action genre completely where all guns go blazing but trying to bring in the emotions in between spoils the flavor of the film. Also, the whole gunman episode was too lengthy for the liking.
The film starts with two friends welcoming a third one from prison, who supposedly had been behind the bars due to a jewelry job gone wrong. Upon his releases, he realizes that the already dystopian world had got dystoped further in those three years. I’m not sure whether to laugh for the ignorance or get irritated by it. Anyways they lose their cycle shop, currency and what not. So, with the help of “friends” from jail, they try to make another robbery, this time from a gambling zone. Booyah!
Swiftly they collect some guns and do the robbery, which was one of the worst I’ve seen on screen. Because there is nothing thrilling in it. The actual story of the movie is how an assassin hunts these three amateurs (fuckin’ amateurs as one of the guards at gambling house call them). In reality, these three don’t have a chance. Wish the assassin, Han (Park Hae-soo) had killed them in their very first meet. At least the feature film would have been a short film and worked at least for the shock value. But he gives them a Rajnish reprise so that he can hunt them slowly and enjoy the exercise. Maybe it was enjoyable for him but definitely not for us.
The director cleverly uses the climatic conditions so that he can keep a check on production values. Almost everything is hazy, thanks to the weather, so we don’t how much dystopian the world is. On top of it, Jun-seok (Lee Je-hoon) keeps telling about how he’d enjoy the sun shine in Taiwan, which is more irritating. I thought I’d at least get to see some good locales in some time but that doesn’t happen too.
Every situation in the movie is too convenient to occur. His release from the jail, the heist, their shop, the hospital with staffs when the three friends enter and hospital with no staffs when the assassin enters, a room to relax in an abandoned flat, no worry about food, fuel or shelter or even ammo. Just when Jun was about to die, the other gang enters, deus ex machina with a huge caps lock. The smile in the face of the assassin should have either been satisfying if we had rooted him or at least disappointing if we had rooted for Jun but it only annoys because it’s a film we wish gets over by some means.
Worse of all is the climax, Han is supposedly not dead even after repeated wounds because he’s a man who’d not die before his job gets done. So, what does Jun do, he practices with the guns and plastic bottles in a private beach, dreams about his friends and takes a trip back to his place to avenge his friend’s death. Seriously, part two for this shit?
constantscribbles 