Humint Review: A Gritty Action-Packed Spectacle That is Disappointingly Unmemorable

Humint Review: In this high-stakes espionage thriller, the North and South Korean secret agents arrive at the Vladivostok border to uncover a deluge of crimes. However, it ends up challenging them worse than they could’ve imagined.

The film has a runtime of 120 minutes.

Humint Review

In Humint, we dive headfirst into a thrilling espionage drama that showcases two intelligence officers and an ordinary North Korean woman in the snowy locales of Vladivostok, as things larger than all three of them threaten to destroy them. At the heart of it is NIS agent Cho, State Security operative Park Geon and ordinary server Chae Seon-hwa, who barrel towards one another for very different reasons.

Along with the espionage melodrama is this angle of sex slavery, drug trade and a world of torture that doesn’t really commit, and only alludes to stuff without getting too gnarly with it. The film tries to push for brain-rotting action-thriller from the get-go, with a dose of romance to keep viewers invested in its emotional core. Considering brainrot only gets you so far, the slick action sequence brings about the dopamine, along with the above mentioned unnecessary violence.

The film is, for the most part, fine. It’s nothing memorable, nor is it terrible. It’s somewhere in the comfortable middle, delivering one shocking scene after another, hoping to keep viewers on edge with its action, guns ablaze and all. It succeeds for the most part, and viewers will find themselves enjoying the insanity on-screen as more booms and bangs ring out every few minutes.

The film’s main themes surround loyalty, betrayal and the ethical dilemmas in espionage. With common people stuck in between warring nations, hoping for a safer life in the middle, the film mostly does a good job of showcasing their realities and how those above them in the pecking order use them for their benefit. All that is great; impactful, even. The performances sell these feelings well, and the cast does a great job of holding on to that emotion throughout the film, especially Shin Sae-kyeong, whom I found to be most memorable of the lot.

In a rather hilarious twist, though, as the movie barrels forward, wrecking everything and everyone in its wake, we surprisingly realise that this is supposedly a film about North Koreans. Considering we spend an enormous amount of time nursing Park Jeong-min and Shin Sae-kyeong’s wrecked relationship as he fights against the cartoonish villain Park Hae-joon, Zo In-sung is lost somewhere in the sauce. I mean, his storyline of being the man who saves his informants from the bad guys doesn’t fare much considering the other things we bear witness to. We don’t miss him when he’s not there and don’t acknowledge him when he is. It’s a weird conundrum.

In the end, Humint isn’t able to hold on to the tension that it desperately wants to create, despite the incessant fight sequences that we are made to watch. The suspense is almost non-existent, and we are made painfully aware as the film draws to a close that the director probably doesn’t really know what to do with its heavier themes of trafficking and slavery, and, as such, uses these terrifying real-world topics as just shock value. Interestingly enough, the whole film might just be that.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for an action-thriller romp with more action than thrill, this might just be something to turn your brain off to. However, Humint offers very little other than that. There’s hardly anything that adds layers to the narrative, and the film falters to do something meaningful with the very important topics that it brings to the table.

What are your thoughts on Humint? Let us know in the comments below!

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