The Huntresses
Director: Park Jae-hyun
Year: 2014
Rating: 5.5
This is pretty goofy for much of its running time though it being a Korean
film it inevitably dives deep into melodrama like a drowning man at some
point. But I was in the mood for this silliness though admittedly it begins
to slightly wear out its welcome as time goes on. The main pleasure for me
was watching one of my favorite Korean film actresses, Ha Ji-won, who I liked
so much in The Phone, Sex is Zero, the TV series Damo, Duelist and the ping
pong film As One. She is part of a trio of lovely female bounty hunters with
Gang Yi-won and Son Ga-In who always get their man. It being a period film
circa 1600's this is even more farfetched than it sounds.
But it is all fairly comical in nature with highly exaggerated action scenes,
modern inventions, disguises, deadly yo-yo's, funny cute faces, hang gliders
and wild chases until suddenly it isn't. It moves into more serious territory
when the Government asks them to track down one of their agents who has top
secret information and who is being chased by enemies of the throne. It gets
more complicated though when Ha discovers that the man who killed her father
years ago is behind this and that the boy she loved as a young girl is his
cruel assassin.
The action heats up and the comedy slows down - though it is still there
- and I began to think that this would have actually been a much better film
if it had been serious right from the get go - three killer women having
no mercy rather than pseudo Charlie's Angels. Still watching Ha is never
a chore and one of her co-mates, Son Ga-in, who is a member of the
girl band, Brown Eyed Girls, is quite easy on the eye as well.
