Project Wolf Hunting

From the outset, director Kim Hong-seon's Project Wolf Hunting plays around with the idea that criminals, and the sinewy bodies they have cultivated, are physically distinct from those who obey or attempt to enforce the law. This otherness is most obviously exemplified by Seo In-guk's Park Jong-du, an amoral gangster who leads a squadron of equally photogenic sociopaths aboard a rioting cargo ship. Covered in inky, peacock feathered tattoos that flicker up his neck then across his cheek, Park's painted skin takes on a reptilian quality; a cold-blooded affectation further reinforced by his casually murderous behaviour and an ability to summon up stringy lockpicks from secret compartments within his mouth. Set on a freighter transporting dozens of deadly prisoners through stormy weather, Wolf Hunting transmits tension with its constantly seesawing power dynamics. Initially, the police are in charge: a group of buttoned-up men and women, armed with snub-nosed pistols, who are (mostly) prepared to play by the rules, no matter how desperate the situation. Once Park and his allies are free, Wolf Hunting becomes drunk on the savagery of young men who take sexual delight in drawing knives across shrieking throats. Unfortunately for all involved, there is a third party; one whose grotesque, superhuman strength subordinates all other factions. Choi Gwi-hwa's ogre-like Alpha is, like Park and his cronies, unrestrained in his violence. Everybody he comes across is slowly and deliberately pulverised, be they cop or criminal. His feet splinter ribcages; his fingers sink into oozing skulls; everything that comes to hand, including limbs no longer attached to their bodies, are weapons. Faced with the dehumanising brutality of the jailor and the deranged cruelty of the jailed, Alpha levels the playing field. In his domain everybody is simply bleeding meat.