Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A Korean man in China takes an assassination job in South Korea to make money and find his missing wife. But when the job is botched, he is forced to go on the run from the police and the gangsters who paid him.
Na Hong-jin's follow-up to The Chaser is a relentless, visceral neo-noir thriller that stands out for its raw, exhausting intensity and its distinctive Korean-Chinese (Joseonjok) milieu. The plot is solid genre fare — a desperate man pulled into a fatal assassination job — elevated by layered motivations and mounting paranoia, though it occasionally strains credibility in its later stretches. Ha Jung-woo delivers a physically and emotionally committed lead performance, and Kim Yun-seok is menacingly magnetic as the gangster antagonist. Cinematography is gritty and kinetic, serving the chase sequences well without being particularly distinctive. The film's novelty lies in its singular voice: the Yanbian setting, the cultural specificity of the Joseonjok immigrant experience, and Na's almost punishing commitment to sustained dread and bone-crunching practical violence make it utterly unmistakable. The ending is grimly satisfying but somewhat abrupt, leaving threads unresolved in ways that feel less poetic ambiguity than unfinished business.