Release date: June 2013
Highly
trained young secret agents from North Korea are smuggled into South Korea;
here they try to live under-the-radar and wait for orders. Ryoo-hwan fakes a
low I.Q. and works in a corner store, getting along with and helping out folks
from the neighborhood. He is joined by his training rival, Hae-jin, whose cover
identity is rock musician and finally by their junior, Hae-rang, whose disguise
is as a student. They hang out and have some goofy times together until a
regime change in the North finally brings them an unexpected set of orders:
they must commit suicide.
A
film that is not sure what it wants to be: a comedy, an action film, or a
tear-jerker. The first half is comedy and well done, besides the sequences
where the three are pointing guns at each other (ho-hum). Kim Soo-hyeon’s role switches
between razor-sharp secret agent and goofy simpleton are interesting. The tone
suddenly changes in the second half to brutal action film: crowds of men from
both sides slug it out, shoot, and knife each other with the three young men in
the middle and everybody dying. The final scene switches back to the
neighborhood with all the folks there wondering >sniffle-sniffle< where
their old bud, Ryoo-hwan, has gone. After an engaging beginning which establishes
the personalities and rivalries of the three young agents, I had very high
hopes for an intriguing build-up and finish, even if a little deus ex machina had
to be thrown in. As it was, the everyone-fights actions scenes and everyone-dies
ending was an unimaginative letdown.
My take: 1 star
The
deep-undercover North Korean agents try to act “normal”,
just hanging
out and doing laundry together.
