Worth: $12.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
HWANG Jung-min, HYUN Bin, KANG Ki-young
Intro:
… solid performances, confident direction …
The latest effort from South Korean auteur YIM Soon-rye (South Bound, Whistle Blower) dramatises the events of a 2007 hostage crisis, when 23 South Korean missionaries were held for ransom by the Taliban. While parts of it focus on elite agent Park Dae-shik (HYUN Bin) and his efforts to resolve the situation, complete with a few decent action moments to have fun with, the scope mainly aims at HWANG Jung-min as Jung Jae-ho, a Korean diplomat at the heart of much of the bureaucratic negotiations.
The narrative initially sets up a ticking clock of 24 hours to arrange for the hostages’ release, but that quickly turns out to be a red herring. It’s less a ticking clock and more a real-life game of Bowser’s Big Blast: Nothing is guaranteed, no time scale is set in stone, and the options all look so deceptively similar that the difference between victory and everything (figuratively and literally) blowing up in everyone’s faces is far too slim.
With that source of tension, the film ends up taking a fair bit to really get going, as it mainly languishes in the mires of ‘playing politics’ (a redundant term if ever there was one). The SK government try to square the circle on saving lives without making themselves look ‘weak’ for giving into terrorist demands, while Jung and his team spend quite a bit of time looking aghast at both the situation and the glibness that it’s being treated with. But once it reaches the halfway point, and the action scenes start to kick in, along with the build-up to the quite harrowing final negotiation, there’s palpable tension for the audience to sink their teeth into.
Thankfully, The Point Men manages to avoid outright racist caricaturing, even with the presence of KANG Ki-young’s ‘Qasim’ injecting Soon-rye’s trademark lighthearted sense of humour at the weirdest times possible.
Even with its Zero Dark Thirty-esque opening, The Point Men doesn’t wring out nearly as much dread or anxiety out of its based-on-actual-events story as it could have. It’s held together by solid performances, confident direction, and an evident want to do justice to the material, but it’s a little too fixated on cold political mechanics to really get at the emotional heart of the drama.
