Well Go USA
There was a particular era of South Korean crime thrillers that managed to creep into foreign markets where they could sometimes be quite impressive or at a minimum, pretty fun if clichéd. Now that the film industry in South Korea has evolved to a new, Oscar-winning space, the classic genre that’s an easy sell isn’t so common anymore — instead you tend to see more unusual or uniquely Korean takes on things. So it’s always interesting to see how things might rear their heads again in a familiar way.
Spiritwalker comes from writer/director Jae-geun Yoon in his second feature film, and continues his sort of ‘crime thriller’ genre perspective while dipping into a specifically fantastical premise. We start with a classic in medias res as we follow a young man (Yoon Kye-Sang), confused and out of place, somehow in the middle of a violent struggle.
He doesn’t seem to recall his name or anything about his situation, and the attempts on his life aren’t helping matters. Soon enough though, he looks in the mirror and sees a face he doesn’t recognize — the movie shows this as a sort of doubled appearance to really drive home the confusion. Our anonymous hero stumbles about trying to figure out who he is and what’s going on, and suddenly he’s attacked in a church by a woman named Jin-ah (Lim Ji-yeon).
Jin-ah pulls a gun on him and demands to know where someone named ‘Ian’ (or I-an depending on your translation) is, but of course our mystery man has no idea about it. Things get even more complicated when he switches bodies again, this time for another stranger — and eventually a particularly dangerous individual.
So our POV dude must play a complicated, precarious game of acting like he knows what’s going on while continuing to solve his situation. He gets some classic ‘hobo help’ from a homeless man who gets dragged into things against his will, while also pondering if he and Jin-ah are on the same side or not as he also tries to track down this mysterious Ian everyone is looking for — suspecting that this will solve his mystery.
Ultimately things do get resolved in a fairly cheesy way, with an underlying conspiracy that’s a bit rushed in exposition at the last minute — but until then, the movie is pretty fun, jumping between people and having our hero slowly begin to get a better and better handle on things, figuring out how to manipulate the bizarre switching to his advantage.
It’s not a particularly elevated sort of movie, but it’s a fun one, with some often fun and amusing performances from the cast of characters. Some of the criminal types are a bit interchangeable, but the actors do an excellent job of showing how they’ve changed into this new person — it’s a tricky balancing act they pull off pretty well.
I wouldn’t call this a great action movie or anything, but it’s a decent idea and feels like it has the potential for something even better in the future. If anything, I’ll be curious to see what comes next from this filmmaker.
Spiritwalker has a run time of 1 hour 48 minutes and is not rated.
Well Go USA
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