You’ve seen
movies like this before. (You could have even seen one very much
like it, since this is a remake of a Hong Kong film.) A criminal gang
with a polished mastermind faces off against an elite law enforcement
squad. (A movie like that called Elite Squad is one of Brazil’s biggest hits ever.) The squad specializes in
surveillance. They identify; they trace; they tag; they track. But, when it comes
time to engage, they call in the tactical team, following protocol. They use tactics that,
when employed against Will Smith in 1998’s Enemy of the State, seemed to obviously exceed the possible, and
now, with electronic eyes surveying major segments of major cities around the world, seem increasingly plausible.
The heroine of this saga (Hyo-ju Han) is the squad’s newbie — code name Piglet. Perhaps because she is female, she gets to show a broader range of emotion than one might expect. The hero is the squad leader, Falcon, who gives her a stringent memorization test in the type of set piece that’s often a staple of this kind of movie. All of the squad have animal nicknames, and Falcon literally moves them (or wooden representations, actually) around on a chess board that represents the streets of Seoul. They even give their first suspect an animal nickname. Caught on camera buying a soft drink, he becomes a “thirsty hippo.” The movie begins with a bank heist and climaxes with a lengthy chase sequence. They’re quite well done, and while I think I missed a link or two in the chain of evidence that allows the squad to identify the mastermind, the chases are clearly shot, and the two directors have a strong visual sense generally.
The level of violence is moderate. There’s some humor in the banter between the squad members. Again, nothing entirely new here, but a well-done thriller.
IMDb link
viewed 10/24/13 7:00 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/25/13
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