Why you can trust GamesRadar+
Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.
Amid Seoul’s amphetamised neon squalor, baby-faced psychopath Ha Jung-Woo kills prostitutes with his bag of rusty tools. After he’s incarcerated by clueless coppers, his latest victim wakes up bleeding in a bricked-up basement, and her pimp (Kim Yun-Seok) has just hours to save her before red tape dictates the murderer be freed.
Those whose impatience overrides their appetite for spurty, South Korean-style vengeance will despair of Na Hong-Jin’s debut; it’s not so much a race against time as a battle against the grinding lunacy of police procedure. Painstakingly assembled, it’s also painfully overlong. A while it’s refreshing to see a thriller where the difference between life and death is decided by interrupted phone signals and bloody-minded bureaucracy, it’s frustrating that it drags its feet before going, belatedly, for the jugular.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
