The high-concept South Korean army thriller \u201cEscape\u201d clocks in at a swift 94 minutes long. It could have easily gone on longer. There\u2019s simultaneously too much and not enough action in this intriguing, but underdeveloped story about a North Korean defector who, after ten years of military service, flees to South Korea. He\u2019s pursued by an obsessed North Korean National Security officer, who provides some tension. Contextualizing flashbacks also add something to this otherwise straightforward chase narrative, even if those tangential asides stall dramatic momentum long enough to make one wonder why there\u2019s either not much more or less where they came from.<\/p>\n
\u201cEscape\u201d begins with some promise. We meet hyper-focused North Korean Sergeant Lim Kyu-nam (Lee Je-hoon) as he sneaks out of his barracks in the dead of night, shimmies past some guards, and plants a few stakes on the way to the Military Demarcation Line. Lim plotted a safe course through a literal mine field, and his path became a little clearer every night. He returns to base, where he\u2019s confronted by a few reminders of why he must take off and soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Deserters get shot, as a scare video reminds Lim and his fellow soldiers, but family and freedom await in South Korea, as anxious comrade Kim Dong-hyuk (Hong Xa-bin) reminds Lim. Kim\u2019s seen Lim at work and wants to go South, too, since \u201cTomorrow is my mom\u2019s birthday. I miss her terribly.\u201d They soon get caught, and Kim takes the blame. That\u2019s about the same time when Lim\u2019s original plans go out the window, forcing him to improvise his way toward freedom. The implacable Field Officer Li Hyun-sang (Koo Kyo-hwan) unexpectedly promotes him for detaining Kim. There\u2019s an award ceremony for Lim, which gives him a perfect opportunity to, well, you know.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s sometimes thrilling to see Lim struggling to get his bearings after his initial plans fall through. His disorientation goes against what little we know about his character, based on the old \u201cTenacious Explorer Armundsen\u201d boy\u2019s adventure paperback that he cherishes and a handful of action-intensive establishing scenes. In these early scenes, we see Lim run, plot, and bide his time. Then, we see him struggle to figure out what to do when he\u2019s heaped with praise that he hasn\u2019t earned. Lim credits Li with his success during an unrehearsed speech, and in doing so, he inadvertently gives the military the sort of tribute it expects. Then Lim finds another opportunity to get away.<\/p>\n
Problems first arise when Li enters Lim\u2019s story. We learn about Li through a handful of scenes that contrast Lim with his vigilant pursuer, a threadbare antagonist whose compulsive need to stop Lim overcompensates for some things. Unfortunately, Lee\u2019s performance as Li doesn\u2019t express much beyond an exaggerated twitchiness, which makes it hard to care when he liberally applies\u00a0dramatic shorthand to Li\u2019s scenes. For example, Li plays the piano for his fellow officers at Lim\u2019s award reception, which lays the foundation for a couple of scenes about Li\u2019s thwarted ambitions. Unfortunately, those scenes indicate more than they express about what\u2019s wrong with Li, who, like a lot of genre movie villains, chases after whoever dares to pursue their dreams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The high-concept South Korean army thriller \u201cEscape\u201d clocks in at a swift 94 minutes long. It could have easily gone on longer. There\u2019s simultaneously too much and not enough action in this intriguing, but underdeveloped story about a North Korean defector who, after ten years of military service, flees to South Korea. He\u2019s pursued by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thriller-movies","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}