Korean cinema continues to reach our screens breaking schemes and catching viewers by surprise. He has achieved this by assimilating the generic keys of Western cinema (mainly Hollywood) and giving them his own idiosyncrasies, fusing genres and presenting the audience with unexpected twists. To this is added a devilishly robust invoice and a level of production that allows these films not only to make the leap to the international market, but also to compete with their own referents on an equal footing, even allowing themselves to get out of the pot in a sense in which the Western cinema today is restricted from moving. Broadly speaking, that is what we can find in this playful entertainment that is Project Wolf Hunting.
TRADITIONAL RECIPE WITH EXOTIC TOUCH
If we were to use the formula to summarize the film, we could say that it is a cross between Con Air con Universal Soldierwith an intermediate turn from thriller to horror to the Open till Dawn, all cooked with a lot of bad blood, a lot of plasmatic excess and a sense of hyperbole and the improbable that only allows two possibilities, leaving the room scared or staying fascinated until the end. It is not surprising that the film has come together so well in fantastic events as festive as Sitges (Special Jury Award and best special effects) or Isla Calavera (award for best feature film).
ROLLER COASTER
The film does not allow the viewer to catch too much breath. Its first 25 minutes are the minimum prelude to put the public in a situation and present the characters in broad strokes, none particularly touched by the wand of morality, neither police nor criminals. After this time of almost obligatory pseudo justification of the plot, the roller coaster starts. From the first outbreak of violence that kicks off the action, the cards are put on the table.
Ahead of us are 90 frantic minutes, loaded with hemoglobin in abundance, a devilish sense of staging, an overwhelming montage and an unprejudiced absence of plot development (if perhaps the minimum and necessary). How would Martin ScorseseThis is not a movie, it’s an amusement park.
CANNON FODDER
Of course, we have characters, briefly introduced in those 25 minutes of introduction, whose luck will be cut short more or less quickly as the film needs to increase its body count. There are minimum established features, certain clichés used, predefined characteristics through the wardrobe, small actions, which will make our predilection go in favor of some and to the detriment of others. A tip, do not get attached, the film does not take prisoners.
SNOWBALL
The ensemble character of the film, drastically reduced in the model of hyper-accelerated disaster cinema, causes the film’s narrative to progress in the form of parallel sequences, which presents a greater challenge in terms of planning and editing. Despite starting explosively, the narrative is in crescendo at all times. Each time the sense of the action is more and more exaggerated, without falling into repetition or wear and tear on the viewer. Each atrocity is followed by an even greater one. As long as the viewer is willing to stay on the attraction’s route, it will continue to offer increasingly disproportionate turns, falls, loops, inversions and spirals so that the animation does not falter.
END OF THE ROUTE
Movies like Project Wolf Hunting shows that this is not a minor genre. It is true that it is not intended for those looking for an attractive and well-constructed literary narrative. It is not cinema with great dialogues, nor great characters. It does not intend to discuss philosophical or social concepts. His is not metaphysics, but physics itself, the physics of perpetual and increasing motion. In this, the film does not deceive its audience and dares to surprise them with its way of blowing up expectations.