It appears that North Korea is managing to capture attention, as evidenced by the films produced by their adversaries in the South. Director Lee Jong-pil's adaptation of the screenplay by Kwon Sung-hui and Kim Woo-geun ultimately lands in an ambiguous space. The narrative presents an intriguing yet underdeveloped tale of a North Korean defector who escapes to South Korea after a decade of military service, pursued by a relentless North Korean National Security officer, which introduces a degree of tension.

The inclusion of contextual flashbacks enriches this otherwise linear chase story, although these digressions occasionally disrupt the dramatic flow, prompting questions about the narrative's depth and coherence. The overall impression is one of incompleteness.

The initial segment of the film was particularly engaging, introducing the highly focused North Korean Sergeant Lim Kyu-nam (Lee Je-hoon) as he stealthily exits his barracks under the cover of darkness, evading guards and strategically placing markers on his route to the Military Demarcation Line. Lim meticulously navigates a literal minefield, with each night bringing him closer to his goal. Upon returning to base, he is faced with reminders of the urgency of his departure.

Another soldier, the anxious Kim Dong-hyuk (Hong Xa-bin), witnesses one of Lim's clandestine outings and expresses his desire to escape to the South, citing, "Tomorrow is my mom's birthday. I miss her terribly." In a moment of folly, he attempts to flee on his own, leading to Lim's capture while trying to rescue him. At this juncture, Kim takes the blame, and I will leave the subsequent developments for the film to reveal.

While the film is certainly watchable and offers moments of entertainment and action, with good acting as part of it, the latter half becomes increasingly disjointed, with numerous subplots left unresolved, ultimately detracting from the overall experience.

I saw the trailer for this film and was not too excited to watch this initially. I got the basic premise that the story would be like a cat and mouse theme where we have a villain chasing the main protaganist around and perhaps catching the protaganist at the end.

I believe what made this film interesting is that the villain is secretly gay (hint: in the movie its pointed out in one of the scenes) but this could have been a possible reason why he let the protaganist go? The film did not have to end on a good ending for the protaganist.

Acting is typical korean action movie. I would recommend it. If you are in the US the movie may still be out in theatres but definitely watch this one over Hijack 1971 if you have not seen either.

Hijack 1971 is a decent film but the story is very one note and the only positive I can say it has some veteran korean actors like Ha Jung-Woo and Sung Dong-Il.

A very intelligent Seargent of the North Korean border force meticulously plans his escape from his base and through minefields to get to South Korea.

He scouts out his escape route at night, makes elaborate plans, draws maps and hides them and more useful items until he needs them.

Buuut on the day of his planned escape everything goes awry and absolutely nothing goes right.

Instead of reaching South Korea he even ends up in the lion's den - a highly guarded party for the military elite in a far away town.

He still tries to flee though and gets into one tough situation after the other.

It is quite like a James Bond movie.

The dangerous situations he gets in are always surprising and you don't see them coming.

And how he manages to get out of them is even more surprising and like in a good James Bond movie he does so with intelligence, wits and smarts.

There is a lot of James-Bond-like irony, fun and black humor in this movie and it is almost always intelligent and clever.

You constantly think "There is no way the hero can get out of this now!"

But he does - and always in a very surprising and clever way.

What makes the escape of our hero extremely difficult is the fact that the antagonist who hunts him, is extremely intelligent too.

The bad guy is a little bit psycho like a James Bond villain but knows the hero from when they were younger and even tries to help him in the beginning.

I really enjoyed watching this clever and smart movie and the battle of wits between the two main characters.

Why then, only (highly deserved) 8 stars and not ten, you might ask?

Well, towards the end, the movie starts to have some really stupid moments and some things happen that are just not believable and totally out of character for the hero and the villain.

It also gets a bit schmaltzy.

It's like they changed the clever screenwriters after just three quarters of the script were finished and the new ones were not quite up to the job.

But the last quarter of the movie is still good but by far not as surprising, thrilling and clever as the rest.

I still highly recommend watching it.