Deliver Us from Evil (2020) Review
Summary: While not as dramatic as the Chaser or stabby as Yellow Sea this is certainly one of the better Korean crime films in the past few years.
4
Go at it!
Hitman In-nam (Hwang Jung-min) has one last job before his retirement and of course it goes wrong due to the target being a blood-brother to killer Ray (Lee Jung-jae) who is now targeting him and anyone related to the hit. Out of the blue he gets a call from his former lover from Thailand begging for help about her kidnapped child but blows it off. When he is contacted later to collect her body he realises it is serious and travels to Thailand where the story really takes off.
I enjoyed Hwang Jung-min’s previous work in the Wailing and the Spy Goes North previously so it was good to see him again. I do not remember seeing Lee Jung-jae in anything recently but he has been very busy. Once again I should know more of these actor’s names apart from the regulars by now as I have seen enough Korean cinema to know. I do recognise faces more than names in real life too.
While the film starts off slow with the usual hitman tropes, the gloves come off once the action moves to Thailand with a lot of stunts involving cars exploding and large crowds you wouldn’t see in other countries. The shots involving the cars seem more dangerous somehow due to the tight spaces and how close people are to them.
A movie like this lives or dies on the fight scenes and it does them well. Some of the stuff towards the end does get a bit over the top when firearms get involved but you always know what is going on and who is on what side.
There is a transgender character who does get treated as a joke at times, but they do get a redemption during the story as they were the only one the main character could trust in the end.
I should have known the director of this movie wrote the Chaser and Yellow Sea, those are two of my favourite Korean action movies. The story involving a child did remind me of the Chaser and I was wondering how it was linked. There is still more stabbing in the Yellow Sea overall but the lead bad guy is good with a knife in this one so there is a link.
I would still rate the Chaser higher as a drama and the Yellow Sea in action but this movie is definitely in my top 10 of Korean action movies from the last 10 years which is saying a lot given how many of them there are.
Trailer:
Film details:
Director: Hong Won-Chan
Producer: Kim Chul-yong
Writer: Hong Won-Chan
Starring: Hwang Jung-min, Lee Jung-jae, Park Jung-min, Choi Hee-seo
Country: Korea
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Length: 108 minutes
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