Review | Cannes 2022: Hunt movie review – Korean spy thriller directed by and starring Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae proves bombastic and muddled
- This film, set in South Korea during the turbulent 1980s and ’90s, draws on real events from that time, including a presidential assassination
- The director, Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae, throws everything at this story, but it comes across as confused and messy
2/5 stars
Serving as his own producer and top-billing star, Lee seems hell-bent in throwing all the historical references, deafening pyrotechnics or narrative twists he could get onto the screen and seeing what will stick.
Sadly, not much does. Hunt is eventually brought down by its messy storytelling, which would confuse international audiences – such as those who watched the film at the Cannes Film Festival last week – without a basic understanding of the South Korean political situation in the late 1970s and early ’80s, when the film is set.
Lee plays Park Pyung-ho, a top-ranking officer at the Korea Central Intelligence Services. After a botched attempt to bring in a defecting North Korean nuclear scientist, Park’s team is suspected of being infiltrated by a Pyongyang-sent mole. Once wielding unchecked powers within the agency, he finds himself investigated by his nemesis, the soldier-turned-spy Kim Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung)
