Driven to Extremes
Park Dae-min doesn’t shake up the driver as badass sub-genre so much as revel in its tropes and give it a feminine edge. So you know there’s a kid.
Special Delivery
Director: Park Dae-min • Writer: Park Dae-min
Starring: Park So-dam, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Eui-sung, Jung Hyeon-jun, Yeon Woo-jin, Yeom Hye-ran, Han Hyun-min
South Korea • 1hr 49mins
Opens Hong Kong May 12 • IIB
Grade: B
There are few things action movies and their directors like more than a car chase. Since the bar was set way, way, way up there in 1968 with Peter Yates’ Bullitt – though some would say William Friedkin’s The French Connection perfected the car chase in 1971 – the car chase has been a critical factor in most action movies. “But how was the car chase?” we ask after leaving a Michael Bay film, or anything with Gerard “G.But” Butler, or some Christopher Nolan excess. There have been great ones since the early-1970s: Anything in a Mad Max movie kills it, nearly anything in a James Bond movie kills. John Frankenheimer’s Ronin has a good one.
Then The Fast and the Furious came along in 2001 and made drivers just as much a thing as the chase itself (it was probably a massive plot by Vin Diesel to get attention). All of a sudden Jason Statham was a mysterious, highly skilled wheelman in The Transporter (by Corey Yuen). Then Ryan Gosling was a mysterious, highly skilled wheelman in Drive. Then Ansel Elgort was a mysterious, highly skilled wheelman in Baby Driver.
Filmmaking 101: If the action hero is female, she’ll have to take care of a kid
In Special Delivery (특송 | Teuksong) Park So-dam (Parasite) plays Eun-ha, a mysterious, highly skilled wheelwoman – didn’t see that one coming did you? – who couriers stuff around Korea, sometimes including people. It should go without saying that, as a highly novel and rare girl, at some point she will be forced to contend with her maternal instincts and protect a crying child. Sure enough, one of her “packages” turns out to be a mobbed up guy called Doo-shik (Yeon Woo-jin), on the run with his son, Seo-won (Jung Hyeon-jun). It’s not a spoiler to say that the dad dies, and Eun-ha reluctantly agrees to shuttle the kid back to her boss, Baek Sa-jang (classic Korean “That guy!” Kim Eui-sung, Train to Busan, Extreme Job) and save the day or something. Along the way the two of them are pursued by crooked cop Kyung-pil (Song Sae-byeok) and a spy with national the security services, Mi-Young (Yeom Hye-ran), because Doo-shik knew something important. Or something.
Filmmaking 101: Bad guys in the 2000s will have ’90s pleated pants
It doesn’t really matter what everyone said, did, or knew because the point of Special Delivery is car chases, and watching Eun-ha clutch, shift and drift with the best of them. And though the film itself is derivative of a million other driving movies like it (but it’s infinitely better than that POS Need for Speed), and as a director Park is more pedestrian than motorised, as a slab of distracting, goofy action it’s okay. Yeah, it’s a cop out to say “okay” but this is. In fairness, Special Delivery has three things going for it: a stellar late-night silent chase through the hilly side streets of Seoul, a suitably brutal and bloody ending, par for the course in a Korean actioner, and a charmingly icy and indifferent performance by Park So-dam, proving she can spread her iciness and indifference around, to great effect. Among all the bloated, violent thrillers to come from Korea these days, this one at least knows its lane, and stays in it. DEK