Directed by the supposed protégé of Park Chan Wook, Kim Sung Soo’s directorial debut comes in the form of Running Wild, a movie about Do-young (Kwone Sang-woo) a rogue cop , and his opposite number, a tough, hard has nails suit wearing cop, Jin-woo (Yu Ji-tae) that does things by the book and gets results.
The film opens with a flashy number; a car and motorbike chase across a motorway, which on paper sounds great but in execution it’s pretty pedestrian. Life for Do-young isn’t going very well as his mother is ill, and close to dying and his half brother has just been released from jail, only to be gutted by thugs and Do-young is out for some old school justice, with a gun in one hand a fist full of “whoop ass” in the other.
It’s only when Do-young comes across Jin-woo that things take a turn, as Do-young ends up interfering in a stake out being run by Jin-woo. Jin-woo makes a deal with Do-young to take out both his target and Do-young’s target in one swoop, if they work together. At first Do-young is reluctant, and thinks the worst of it, but naturally as predictable story lines go, he ends up agreeing with Jin-woo and cooperates on the basis that he gets his man. Things obviously don’t always go according to plan, and having Do-young on a leash is harder to manage than Jin-woo thought. To add to his woes, the crime boss is bringing in the big guns to deal with Jin-woo, and his missus has decided she doesn’t like handcuffs anymore and wants a divorce. All is well on Walton Mountain.
Like Wild Card, Running Wild is another melodramatic crime piece, with some average acting ruined further by a lacklustre and immobile script that takes forever to get anywhere. It’s almost a given that 95% of Korean films will have a melodramatic moment or two, but there’s a little too much sop in this film for my liking.
The fight sequences are also rather unspectacular, looking raw, unpolished and lacking finesse. If I wanted to see a lame fight, I’d visit a school playground and watch to boys slap each other to death. It’s not what I really want to see in a film, and the action does nothing but add to the checklist of woes already on the list. It’s poorly choreographed, the fights are labourious and dull, often feeling embarassing to watch at times.
Running Wild’s problems don’t end there though, for the acting is also woefully inadequate and at times you just feel like punching the characters on screen, just to see if you can get some honest, raw emotion out of them, instead of the put on “we’re only acting, so dont’ try so hard” face they keep as a regular. You’re just not convinced that Do-young is a rough and ready cop ready to take down the world’s evil, and you’re not convinced that Jin-woo has the intelligence to lick a stamp, let alone command a stake out operation.
It’s not the worst Korean cop film I’ve seen, but it’s certainly not the best and doesn’t really deserve to be linked with Park in anyway, since his work is in a league and class of it’s own. Genius at work for one, vagabond at work for another. No offence to Kim Sung Soo but I could probably give a tramp a video camera, and if he doesn’t sell it for a few bottles of beer and a tampon to brush his teeth with, I expect he would capture more interesting footage filimng the streets of Oxford Circus late in the night when the idiots get drunk and come out to play.
Running Wild is yet another film that tries to mix high octane action, melodrama and crime and yet still fails to get it right even with a two hour window of opportunity to impress. It does offer a sort role reversal close to the end, but that reversal is so short that it doesn’t pan out very well or very convincingly. The best bit about the film could have been a bittersweet ending, but even that falters when it has the chance to do something different. Alas, Walton Mountain has issues.
I’ve probably been overharsh with the film, as there were times I enjoyed it and things seem to gel together, but to call Soo Park’s protégé based on this is wildly inaccurate. There’s none of the intelligence, panache, dark humour nor engaging direction and script writing that Park offers. Instead we’re given a false sense of hope with a hyperbolic tosh that should have remained in the recycle bin ready to be turned into fresh film for a project worthy of celluloid.
Verdict: Korean action melodrama. Yawn.