Escape

Story: Sergeant Gyoo-nam (Lee Je-hoon) is stationed near the Demilitarized Zone. He has been planning to flee to South Korea for a while now and therefore sneaks out of the barracks every night to mark down the landmines on his escape route. However, the soldier Dong-hyuk (Hong Xa-bin) sees him and asks him to take him with him. Gyoo-nam denies everything and tells him to keep his mouth shut if he doesn't want to be reported. In the following night, Dong-hyuk has disappeared and an alarm jerks the soldiers out of their sleep, as they have to find a deserter. Gyoo-nam realizes that his map is gone, but he soon finds Dong-hyuk. Unfortunately, the two are discovered by the rest of the soldiers, so now they are supposed to be executed by a fire squad. Major Hyeon-sang (Koo Kyo-hwan) makes an appearance, though, and explains that it would not look good for North Korea if there were two deserters, and since it looks like Gyoo-nam wanted to stop the soldier from escaping, he is supposed to be turned into a hero. In fact, the major has known Gyoo-nam since they were children. The sergeant was actually supposed to be discharged from the military the following day, but now major Hyeon-sang has a permanent position in mind for him. Since Gyoo-nam is no longer at the base and instead has to attend an award ceremony, it seems like an escape is impossible. But he does not give up ...

Review: There are now more than enough movies which are set on the border between North and South Korea. Of course, there is the modern classic "JSA", but also more recent works such as the comedy "6/45". If you hope to get something new with "Escape", you might be disappointed. It is just a short and snappy action flick which focuses on the escape across the border, while some unforeseen events happen in between. It's all pretty nicely done and therefore reasonably entertaining, but it doesn't really have any depth. And you're not quite sure whether you should be happy about the fact that the filmmakers finally spared us the exaggerated melodrama in a story about the country's separation, or whether you should be a little disappointed that the story stays pretty superficial emotionally. However, the story offers more than enough to allow for a constant brisk pace. The characters, with exception of the villain maybe, could have been a little more three-dimensional, though.

As you might have expected, the movie first shows similarities to a prison break flick. At night, Gyoo-nam sneaks into the DMZ and spies out a way through the minefield. The strip of field there is surrounded by untouched nature, so there are also explosions every now and again when a wild boar happens to step on one of the mines. Of course, for the poor soldiers of North Korea this is like Christmas, because finally there is meat, and more than enough of it. Unless the superiors find out about it, then the wild boar naturally wanders up into the hierarchy of communism, in which everyone is "equal". Sadly, we don't really learn anything that we didn't already know before. Surprisingly, though, it is not the material wealth and the abundance of goods in South Korea that make escaping so appealing to Gyoo-nam. Instead, it is his desire to take fate into his own hands and - as is emphasized several times - to be allowed to fail as often as he likes. Because if you fail in the North, that's it for you ...

Lee Je-hoon ("Sleep") plays the soldier who has nothing to lose anymore. A little character depth would have been nice here. Apart from the fact that he is not a bad guy because he wants to save his buddy, portrayed by Hong Xa-bin ("Hopeless"), we know hardly anything about him. The latter doesn't have any special characteristics either, except that he is somehow like the little brother who always has to be bailed out, so that you are hardly emotionally attached to him. The villain is more fascinating, though. Koo Kyo-hwan ("Parasyte - The Grey") portrays a man who has come to terms with his role and even appears as Gyoo-nam's savior at first, since otherwise his guilty friend would have had to face a firing squad. But after he is "betrayed" by his friend, who wants to leave the country, he becomes a merciless hunter. However, the fact that the villain once had dreams of his own becomes apparent in a few short flashbacks and when a former brief love for a man is touched upon. Something that is of course unthinkable in North Korea. Every time the villain appears, the quality of the movie rises quite a bit, for which Koo deserves praise.

Unfortunately, the director could have gotten more out of the villain, and especially his scenes with Gyoo-nam would have needed more menacing elements. The two simply lack chemistry, and the rest is rather standard stuff too. How and why there are nomads in North Korea who have gotten their hands on weapons remains a mystery as well, same goes for some of our hero's ridiculous attempts at deception, which - for whatever reason - actually work. Due to the fact that external influences pushed Gyoo-nam from one situation to the next, the events seem strung together quite randomly. But that's exactly what drives him out of North Korea: Nothing goes according to his own will. That's why you can't really blame the movie for that, but it's still weird that towards the finale we see Dong-hyuk, the "little brother", rolling down a slope and then suddenly finding himself back at the base from the beginning. Which really has you thinking about how exactly we got here again.

Director Lee Jong-pil ("Samjin Company English Class") proves that he has a talent for keeping up a brisk pace. There's always some action, even though not excessively, and it's all nicely entertaining. Still, it is a major shortcoming that we hardly know anything about the hero and that he therefore does not matter to us as a person. Especially towards the end, this takes its toll, as the movie doesn't manage to touch us. Particularly since the movie takes place on the northern side of the border, a lot more could have been done thematically, but instead everything stays pretty superficial. Which means that "Escape" works well as nice evening entertainment, but you will forget the movie pretty quickly. Even though everything always stays in motion, you will notice at closer inspection that there is not a single original action scene here. So, in the end, the hard facts remain that "Escape" wastes its potential as a profound drama between life in North Korea and South Korea as well as an action movie.

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