‘Point’ and Shoot
Hwang Jung-min and Hyun Bin star in a dusty, sweaty, entirely silly hostage thriller. At least they identified the country.
the Point Men
Director: Yim Soon-rye • Writer: An Young-Soo
Starring: Hwang Jung-min, Hyun Bin, Kang Ki-young, Jung Jae-sung, Kwon Hyuk, Jeon Sung-woo, Fahim Fazli, Bryan Larkin
South Korea • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong February 2 • IIB
Grade: B
Hostages are having a moment. Who knew in 2012 that Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning Argo would kick off a hostage crisis renaissance. Between Somali pirates in Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips, to Dante Lam’s terrorists in “Yewaire” (perhaps a combination of defunct Zaire and Yemen, who knows) in Operation Red Sea, to Ryoo Seung-wan’s North-South political tensions during embassy workers’ Escape from Mogadishu, and Rao Xiaozhi’s actioner about the rescue of a pair of diplomats from the “Republic of Numea” (actually created in Ningxia and I have no clue what that might be) in Home Coming last year, the often brown people of hot, dusty, war-torn locales are the movies’ new favourite heavies. This trend continues with Whistle Blower director Yim Soon-rye taking her Kathyrn Bigelow shot in The Point Men | 교섭, loosely based on the hostage negotiations and rescue of 23 Korean missionaries captured by the Taliban in 2007.
Jordan (it’s always either Jordan or Morocco) doubles for Afghanistan and megastars Hwang Jung-Min (The Spy Gone North) and Hyun-Bin (who was hilariously out-hotted by Daniel Henny in Confidential Assignment 2: International) play the rescuers with glamorous sheens of sweat on them in a by-the-numbers, muscular (surprising for Yim) actioner that passes muster as a holiday diversion but doesn’t look to comment on the vagaries of post-war diplomacy, Korea’s rising international profile, and the ethics of Christian missions. It doesn’t have to. It’s not one of those movies.
Jordan really is beautiful
At a lean, targeted, 108 minutes – practically a short film by Korean thriller standards – The Point Men hits the ground running, and picks up with the missionaries on their Jesus bus (let’s just call it: they should not be in Afghanistan), which promptly gets pegged by Taliban radicals. They’re scooped up and taken off to a desert stronghold, where the local leader, Fahim Fazli (12 Strong) flits between murdering them, swapping them for Taliban prisoners, or ransoming them. The first person the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs taps to wade into the quagmire is diplomat and seasoned hostage negotiator Jung Jae-ho (Hwang), followed quickly by National Intelligence Service Middle Easts specialist operative Park Dae-sik (Hyun) when bodies start dropping.
This is an action movie so can you guess what comes next? Uh huh, you got that, honey. Jung and Park clash over what each sees as the right way forward. Jung maintains talking is the answer, pay if they have to and to hell with Korea’s international reputation. Lives are on the line! Park insists power is the answer. Get some intel on the ground from well-placed informants like Afghanistan-based opportunists Lee Bong-han, AKA Qasim (Kang Ki-Young) and blast a way in if need be. Lives are on the line! The Taliban keep resetting deadlines, a British merc double crosses them and finally Jung shows off just how brassy his balls are and meets with hostage-takers in person.
The Point Men doesn’t aim for socio-psychological depth the way the hostage drama’s standard bearer, Sidney Lumet’s 1975 Dog Day Afternoon does, and that’s fine; that’s also something of an apples to oranges comparison. But if we’re going to do apples to apples, it falls a bit short even by those standards. Escape from Mogadishu had added texture because it exploited the tension of the political jockeying between North Korea and South Korea, both of whom in the 1980s were angling for admission into the United Nations and active in Somalia, in between its considerable action set pieces. There’s little of that in The Point Men. The Korean government makes it clear to its staff never to refer to the hostages as missionaries, only as tourists, so as not inflame the situation, and the Foreign Affairs office in Seoul freaks out when a TV station broadcasts an interview with an analyst who bluntly states what the 23 were doing in Kabul. But this is as far as Yim and writer An Young-Soo care to interrogate the issue, despite Yim’s demonstrated skill at getting inside her characters’ heads: the barely concealed regret and bittersweet drama Waikiki Brothers being Exhibit A. The Point Men is stolid, sturdy, free of any real solution (are there in cases like this though?), with respectable performances and not so stylised it can’t insert a new helmer were Yim to bow out. In other words it’s primed for potential franchise-dom. That alone should tell you all you need to know. — DEK