Ransomed

The middle of the eighties. Min-jun, a Korean foreign ministry official, is chasing an overseas posting to advance his career. A call comes from a colleague who disappeared in Lebanon; the man has been held for years and a ransom is wanted. Min-jun volunteers, because finishing this will get him the posting he wants. He loses the money as soon as he reaches Beirut, and his only help is a Korean taxi driver called Pan-su. Neither trusts the other. Kim Seong-hun directs. Ha Jung-woo plays Min-jun and Ju Ji-hoon plays Pan-su. The narrative is drawn from the real case of a Korean diplomat kidnapped in Lebanon in the mid eighties, which stayed in the news in Korea for a long time. Where the film works is the pairing. The two have different interests, both are after money, and the friendship builds slowly; it is that relationship rather than the action that carries the narrative. The Beirut sections were shot in Morocco, with the streets of the civil war period rebuilt accordingly. Kim Seong-hun was known for Tunnel, and uses the same method here, combining a crisis with satire of bureaucracy. The weakness is the second half. The chases run long and the film settles into the shape of the genre, while the political background stays on the surface. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean action comedy and rescue stories drawn from real events. Who it is not for: the historical context is thin, the depiction of the Middle East is conventional, and it runs long.