★★½
“Good only in car parts.”
Based on the trailer, I was hoping for something like a Korean version of The Transporter. It seemed to promise this, with Jang Eun-ha (Park) playing a courier for Baekgang Industries, a company who will transport things – mostly people, it appears – from Point A to Point B, when regular delivery methods are not possible. For example, because the passenger in question is being chased by enemies, and needs to make a quick exit from the country before he’s found. Her latest mission involves baseball pitcher Kim Doo-shik, who has blown the whistle on a match-fixing scandal, so needs to escape before those behind it get hold of him and young son Kim Seo-won (Jung).
So far, so sprightly, especially after an enthralling early sequence which showcases Eun-ha’s mad driving skills in avoiding pursuers through the narrow streets of Busan. However, the attempted pick-up of Kim Sr. goes badly awry, as he’s being chased by Jo Kyung-pil (Song). Jo is a corrupt cop who is also behind the gambling ring involved in the match-fixing. Eun-ha ends up in possession of Seo-won, and… Hang on, didn’t we write about three different versions of this story in October 2022? Yeah, for much of the rest of the film is basically another take on Gloria. Brash, beer-drinking Eun-ha is lumbered with a kid whom she cannot initially stand, yet inevitably, comes to care for Seo-won over the remaining course of the film.
Now, this isn’t all that different from The Transporter, where Jason Statham was also lumbered with an unwanted human package, in his case Shu Qi. However, there, it was the jumping off point for some cool and generally entertaining action, e.g. the classic garage fight, involving a well-oiled Statham. Here, not nearly so much, even though Jo is keen to get hold of the kid, who has a computer dongle which is key to the recovery of $30 million. While this could have been the source of multiple exciting car-chases – and as the opening shows, technically, the makers were more than capable – it feels as if director Park is more interested in how suddenly enforced maternal responsibility changes his heroine. I can’t say I’m with him there.
The concept can work, but seems incredibly trite here, and doesn’t help matters that Seo-won is a very generic child, with little personality compared, say, to Newt in Aliens, or Mathilda in The Professional. Consequently, Eun-ha’s decision not to drop the child off at the nearest police-station seems contrived for plot purposes, rather than resulting from a natural release of suppressed nurturing emotions. It’s well-enough assembled that it never becomes unwatchable, yet proceedings remain just that: assembled. It’s not without merit, since both protagonist and antagonist make for interesting characters. But it the end, Chris described it as “cute,” and that’s borderline damning with faint praise in her vocabulary – one step above “interesting.” I can’t honestly say she was wrong in her assessment.
Dir: Park Dae-min
Star: Park So-dam, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Eui-sung, Jung Hyeon-jun