Directed by: Kim Hyeong-ju, (김형주) Starring: Kim Young-kwang (김영광), Lee Sun-bin (이선빈), Oh Dae-hwan (오대환), Kim Tae-hun (김태훈), Julian Kang Release Date: February 17th, 2021
Action comedy in the early days of New Korean Cinema most certainly featured rival flamboyant gangsters clashing over old grudges or girls in massive street brawls where wooden or steel bat-wielding thugs would have at it. Known as the Jopok (gangster) Comedy, films like My Wife is a Gangster (2001) and Marrying the Mafia (2002) dominated the box-office until audiences largely grew tired of them. The Man from Nowhere (2010) more or less marked the Korean gangster film’s complete transition into more serious and darker crime films while retaining but refining upon the action found in the Jopok Comedy. Since then, Korean comedies have largely been romantic or family oriented.
Recently, South Korean cinema has seen a revitalization of the action comedy with box-office smashes like Confidential Assignment (2017), Midnight Runners (2017), and Extreme Job (2019). And while gangsters occasionally play a supporting role, each of these films feature an investigative or otherwise procedural component to a narrative that consists of unlikely cooperative or undercover work and secret agents. Last year’s OK! MADAM (2020) followed suit with its story of a high-altitude hijacking suppressed by a retired female secret agent on her family’s first vacation abroad. Mission: Possible (2021) joins this new tradition of South Korean action comedy films to feature the joint investigation of two unlikely individuals who find themselves in over their heads as they attempt to expose a dangerous underground crime ring.
When a Chinese intelligence agency learns of an illicit arms trafficking ring operating on the Korean peninsula, they secretly begin work to deter the threat. After declaring an undercover sting operation to be suicidal, officials throw caution to the wind and send in their rookie double agent Da-hee (Lee Su-bin) to the proverbial lion’s den to get the coveted intel. To avoid suspicion, Da-hee is to covertly rendezvous with a Korean special agent under the guise of a private investigator’s office. But when Da-hee arrives, she mistakenly takes the quirky private investigator, Su-han (Kim Young-kwang), to be her Korean counterpart after he becomes all too willing to help her out at the sight of her large quantitates of money brought along to help gain access to her targets.
The two begin to covertly work through Da-hee’s persons of interest list, but they encounter unexpected escalations in danger with each attempt at infiltrating the criminal world. Not long into their investigation, the police also grow hot on their trail as they seem to leave a wake of destruction wherever they go. As the duo finds themselves caught between both sides of the law, their pre-evaluated “impossible” chance of success becomes more of a reality at every turn. This unlikely pairing, with a few hidden tricks of their own, pull out all the stops to turn the tide in their favor as they work to dissolve the arms trafficking ring.
Both Kim Young-kwang (On Your Wedding Day) and Lee Sun-bin (OK! MADAM) have great on-screen chemistry together as the oddly paired investigative force. Kim Young-kwang brings a goofball charm similar to that of his character in the early half of On Your Wedding Day. It’s a style that isn’t for everyone, and wasn’t instantly working for me. But the Mission: Possible script gives the character enough leeway to justify the odd behavior so that I was genuinely on board with the character by the action-packed finale he takes center stage in.
Lee Sun-bin was the biggest standout performer in Mission: Possible though. For her first major leading role, she gives a refreshingly nuanced performance as the petite brainy side of this rough-and-tumble operation. Facial expressions were spot on and her overall screen presence felt both strong and unique. And while her action scenes weren’t nearly as physically convincing as Kim Young-kwang’s, they were cut together well enough to give her a few standout moments to establish the feeling that she’s pulling equal weight in the team.
Mission: Possible doesn’t “WOW” with mind-boggling stunts like the Mission: Impossible franchise, but it takes a fun approach to its smaller action set pieces that sees a slow build up to an impressive and furious climax. Besides the opening hijacking scene, there is little action in the first hour or so of Mission: Possible. The film is much more in its comedic zone building upon the fun banter between the leads and other situational comedy. There are also several recognizable faces among the supporting cast from actors who regularly appear on TV within Korea that will be amusing to locals but may not translate well abroad.
Like other new-style Korean action comedies, Mission: Possible lacks the colorful gangsters and bad guys from the early days of New Korean cinema. Gone are the days of bizarre personality quirks and colorful large collared shirts that added that extra Korean flavor to the villains. Nowadays, gangsters are dark suited and mild-mannered business men with sharp knives in their pockets. That being said, Oh Dae-hwan, who had a supporting role in Veteran (2015), is very good at leading his goons in Mission: Possible. They very occasionally gleam with unique quirks and attire of their own that call back to the old Jopok Comedy days. The beefcake gangster (Julian Kang) who is a passionate fan of the K-Pop girl group Red Velvet was an excellent touch.
Mission: Possible effectively transitions into more of an action film just after the halfway point marked by an entertaining Jacky Chan-esque hotel kitchen brawl that incorporates environmental objects and fixtures in a fun way. The final confrontation with gangsters sees a pretty lengthy chase and shootout in the typical dark corridors of a shipyard that upticks the action and violence yet another notch. And to top everything off, Kim Young-kwang channels his inner Won Bin from The Man from Nowhere (2010) for some intensely climactic knife fights that put a marvelous stamp on the film’s full embrace of its signature Korean action roots.
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