Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Confidential Assignment - A Good Old Fashioned Buddy Cop Action Movie

During the last trip to my mother's hometown last week, the four of us including my mom, wife and cousin went by Garuda airlines. As usual it was having an inflight entertainment and once I was on my seat, immediately I started to browse the movies that I could watch. One movie caught my attention which was this Korean film that seemed interesting. However, the duration of the movie was around 2 hours while my flight was less than that. But I thought I could see it during my flight home anyway. So I continued watching this one while my wife saw a different movie. Well let us continue with the story.

Brief Story Line

A North Korean investigator named Im Cheol-Ryung (Hyun Bin - My Name is Kim Sam-soon, Secret Garden TV series etc) was given a special assignment by his superior, to capture a rogue officer and former military named Cha Ki-seong (Kim Joo-hyuk - My Wife Got Married, The Servant etc) who escaped to South Korea bringing money counterfeit plates referred as Supernotes. Cheol-Ryung also had other motives for capturing Ki-seong and he would stop at nothing to do so.

Meanwhile, a South Korean police detective named Kang Jin-tae (Yoo Hae-jin - King and the Clown, Veteran etc) was given the assignment to "babysit" Cheol-Ryung while he was in Seoul for 3 days with the North Korean contingent. At first Jin-tae hesitated with the assignment but he thought he would get a promotion after finishing this so he accepted it, especially since he need the money to support his wife Park So-yeon (Jang Young-nam - Azooma etc), his 8 year old daughter and his younger sister in law Park Min-young (Yoona of Girls' Generation - Prime Minister and I, K2 etc).

The investigation would start from 1 of Ki-seong's man named Park Myung-ho (Lee Dong-hwi -  Reply 1998 TV series). When Jin-tae and Cheol-ryung finally worked together, things really were difficult from the start since Jin-tae was tasked to try and prolong Cheol-Ryung's investigations while Cheol-Ryung was trying his best to complete his assignment and his own personal mission before he had to go back to North Korea and lost his chance. So could both of them resolved their differences and complete their assignments? Find them all in this entertaining action comedy movie.

End of Brief Story Line

I mentioned above that I thought I could finish the movie during my flight home, but unfortunately the plane was having different movies and somehow this one was not available. So I had to search through online streaming to finish it. It was a good thing that I could complete the movie as it was a really entertaining film with some laughter and cool action sequences. And let's not forget emotional moments which were like the trademark of Korean movies.

The movie's formula was not brand new. It was focusing on the partnership of two very different characters. One was a serious investigator from a communist country with dark past while the other was an easygoing detective from a more liberal country with lots of love from his family. So the interaction between these two were definitely the main attraction. There were some funny scenes but my favorite was the scenes involving Yoona's character whenever she was in awe of Cheol-Ryung. Yoo Hae-jin provided a good laughter and very suitable in the comedic role, while Hyun Bin seemed to be very confident playing lead role of kick-ass cool looking action hero and he obviously looked very sharp in the fighting sequence. And the main villain was portrayed nicely by Kim Joo-hyuk.

I truly enjoyed the action scenes, especially the climax in the last half hour. There was some interesting and nicely done moments during the beginning of end credit scene. I bet this movie would have been awesome seen in big screens rather than the small screen of the back of airplane seats. And what I understood was the movie itself was quite successful in its country, garnering the most ticket sales in early 2017. 

In conclusion, as an action comedy movie, this one quite delivered. You can definitely enjoy the chemistry between the 2 main characters, the action sequence and few emotional & comedic moments. The 2 hours duration felt just right and not boring since the pace was quite fast and the movie did not feel too heavy. It did not have very brutal gore scenes full of blood and love making scenes, so quite safe to be enjoyed by younger generations. In case this movie play in cable TV sometime later, it is definitely worth to see. 

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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