Time to Hunt (2020)

Time to Hunt (2020)
Original Title: 사냥의 시간
Translation: Time of the Hunt

 

Starring: Lee Je-hoon, Ahn Jae-hong, Choi Woo-sik, Park Jeong-min, Park Hae-soo
Director: Yoon Sung-hyun
Action Director: Choe Bong-rok

Another day, another South Korean film that runs in excess of 130-minutes.

What we have here is something of a heist/cat-and-mouse action thriller set in a pre-apocalyptic South Korea, not too unlike the Japan that we see in Blood Heat. Like that movie, the problem is mainly driven by a failing economy as opposed to nuclear weapons, viruses, or zombies. In the context of Time to Hunt, South Korea has defaulted on its International Monetary Fund loans, which I assume the country tried to pay off by printing out of outrageous sums of won. As with Germany following WW2, the result is hyper-inflation that is driving people into the streets to protest, pushing the government into police state status. And since the won is largely useless now, there has been no foreign investment, causing the industrial sector to go belly up. Now, the government is trying to stabilize currency by prohibiting the exchange of won for dollars, although some entities still have their stockpiles (i.e. banks, clandestine casinos, etc.).

It is in this setting that we meet our main characters. Ki-hoon (Choi Woo-sik, of Parasite and Train to Busan) and his slow-witted partner Jang-ho (Ahn Jae-hong, of “Kingdom”), are a couple of street hustlers who are eking out an existence in Seoul. They are living off the proceeds from a big job they committed three years ago, but money is running out fast. And they have a criminal record, so if employment is sparse for regular people, imagine what it’d be for people with shady pasts. When we meet them, they heading over to the local prison to pick up their best friend, Jun-seok (Lee Je-hoon, of Phantom Detective and “Secret Door”). Jun-seok took the fall for them during that aforementioned job and is finally being released.

Upon discovering that their money is worth nothing and that their dollar stash is running dangerously low, Jun-seok makes a proposal: perform a final job to get them enough money to get the hell out of South Korea and emigrate to Taiwan, where things are still peachy keen, economy-wise (one assumes that Xi Jinping died of a “heart attack” before reunification plans could commence). He suggests that they bust into a clandestine casino, where a former fourth member of their team, Sang-soo (Park Jeong-min, of Fists of Legend and Deliver Us from Evil), works as a waiter. Sang-soo owes an outrageous sum to Jun-seok, who is willing to forgive the debt if he gets in on the job.

The four ne’er-do-wells meticulously plan out the heist and visit an ex-con friend of Jun-seok to get themselves some powerful weaponry that will really intimidate the establishment’s security guards. The heist goes as planned for the most part, right down to Jang-ho remembering to steal the hard drives with all the CCTV footage so that they won’t be able to find out who was responsible. However, there is a slight snag to that bit of forethought and insight: the CCTV footage on those hard drives also has all the footage of VIPs and police higher-ups visiting the casino. Without them, there’s no material with which to blackmail the “good guys” whenever they need a favor or two. So, the casino owners—who remain faceless throughout the film—hire a methodical killer named Han (Park Hae-soo, of “Squid Game” and Yaksha: Ruthless Operations) to retrieve the hard drives and “tie up all the loose ends.” Our heroes may be well-armed, but they are certainly not prepared the ordeal awaiting them…

There are two questions to be asked about a film like Time to Hunt upon reaching its conclusion. The first one is “Does the dystopian setting contribute meaningfully to the movie in any way?” The answer is “Sorta.” I mean, it does provide our characters with a surplus of abandoned buildings to hide out in throughout the running time. It goes some way to explain why our characters are financially screwed early on, but honestly, that could’ve been treated via other narrative details without having to set the movie in the near-future. I guess it was needed as a way to give the film an oppressive atmosphere suitable for the oppressive atmosphere of our antiheroes’ plight, but the background details of South Korea’s economic collapse don’t contribute much to the story itself.

The other question is whether or not the film deserves its 134-minute running time. The answer to that is “Not quite.” I’m pretty sure you could have edited out the third-act subplot involving the brother of the arms dealer and not lost anything at all. This is especially because that character (and his cronies) show up briefly when they are introduced, and then get to fire a bunch of guns at the villainous Han at the climax. They really do not add anything to the narrative that could’ve been relegated to Jun-seok and his cohorts. There are probably a handful of scenes that could have been trimmed down by a few seconds here and there that would have contributed to the narrative being a lot tighter without losing much in the overall story.

Where Time to Hunt shines, and this is mainly thanks to writer-director-editor Yoon Sung-hyun and cinematographer Lim Won-guen (who was nominated for an award for this), is a combination of the visuals and tension generated by them. Connoisseurs of martial arts cinema like me often complain about bad lighting in movies whenever it obscures the action scenes. There is a lot of darkness in this film, but it is shot artfully in that every shadow becomes a reason to generate suspense and tension. Just watch the sequence in the parking garage—or the previous scene at the bar—and you’ll see just how scary an ill-lit location can be. Lim also likes to soak scenes in red filters, almost like some of the more beautiful sequences in Dario Argento’s Suspiria, but contrast the Gothic architecture of Argento’s films with the rundown, post-industrial age jungle of this film. Yoon Sung-hyun also writes Han to be such an intimidating villain that he’s just as frightening to us the viewer as he is to viewer, even when he’s not on screen.

Speaking of writing, one of the other strengths of the film is the characters. They are not especially deep, but their camaraderie is palpable throughout. Jung-seok is a hardened criminal, but he is faithful to his friends, even when he finds out that the money they stole that put him in prison in the first place is no longer around. He truly cares about his friends, even Sang-soo, whom he was initially angry at for stiffing him on owed money. Jung-seok is often willing to lie in order to protect his friends, especially the not-particular-smart Jang-ho. Both Jung-seok and Ki-hoon are especially sympathetic in terms of their patience for their friend, in spite of his intellectual shortcomings. That sort of loyalty makes these characters sympathetic, despite their skirting about the law when it comes to their actions.

The most unexpected aspect of this film is the ending. I won’t spoil it, but it doesn’t really the end the way you might expect it to. It does, however, make sense within the framework of the narrative. It is ambiguous enough to suggest a sequel, but even if it never gets one, it’s fun to use your imagination to think about what will happen.  Time to Hunt is not an action extravaganza, but it is a solid and good-looking (if overlong) thriller that deserves a view.