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[HanCinema's Film Review] "The Target"

I've often wondered why it is in fiction that people are always getting kidnapped from hospitals. It seems like any nurse or doctor paying the slightest bit of attention should notice when something is awry, and even police seem to be clueless on the rare occasion any are stationed outside the room of an important witness. Tae-joon (played by Lee Jin-uk) is a doctor who does pay attention. As punishment, his life is turned into an action film for ninety minutes.

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That's about the only particularly innovative thing "The Target" does in regards to narrative. Otherwise this is a pretty standard action thriller about punching, gunfights, kidnapping, plot twists, and callbacks. As much as the movie tries it's pretty predictable. I did like how they tried to disguise the main villain by casting Yu Jun-sang. Unfortunately he's too good an actor. I can tell the difference between Yu Jun-sang pretending to be a nice guy and Yu Jun-sang pretending to be a guy who's pretending to be a nice guy.

Luckily the cast is having way too much fun to bother mewling over boring questions like that. Every scene is a hurried race to get to the next scene, where there will be more exciting action. The sense of logistics here is excellent. Sometimes fistfights turn into gunfights, sometimes the other way around. It mostly depends on how close everybody is to the guns. Characters constantly make mistakes, suffer the consequences, whereas we only have to suffer through another fight scene. Lucky there's a doctor on hand to try to keep everybody from getting completely killed.

And even if the movie is predictable, on a meta-level, what's the big deal? It's fun to guess what's going to happen next. Early on Tae-joon gives his wife a sort of emblem as a gift. It's obvious that this will somehow be relevant later on, and we'll get a pay-off where it turns out this accessory is essential to the climax. Then we get to that scene and, what do you know, it works pretty much as intended.

That's a pretty accurate description of "The Target" as a whole. It works as intended. The movie isn't art by any stretch of the imagination- don't let the fact that it's a remake of a French film fool you. The story exists mostly as an excuse for Director Chang to transition into new setpieces. Great care is taken to make sure that each action sequence is easy to follow and understand even as the fighters move incredibly quickly. There's always the subtext that a single gunshot will make all the preceding fisticuffs totally irrelevant.

I like this movie. Its ambition is not to tell an amazing story, but rather just be a load of fun at the cineplex. The lack of pretension is actually fairly refreshing. Director Chang is sticking to his strengths here and doing what he wants to do. It's pretty clear that he gave everyone he was working with the same instructions, so just take "The Target" at its word. This is an action movie for people who like action movies. And maybe the rest of you can come along for the ride too, might be fun. Who knows?

Review by William Schwartz

"The Target" is directed by Director Chang and features Ryu Seung-ryong, Yu Jun-sang, Lee Jin-uk and Kim Sung-ryung.

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