With its extremely brisk pace, there's little downtime in "Yaksha: Ruthless Operations". The film was gripping and thrilling especially in its climactic last half hour. But the film's story just flew by our heads. It was the kind of highfalutin and flowery logic that either got lost in translation or just too complicated for our taste. In any case, even with its confusing narrative, "Yaksha: Ruthless Operations" was enjoyable as a pure action film.
Prosecutor Han (Park Hae-soo) has been selected by the head of the NIS, South Korea's intelligence agency, to visit Shenyang, China and check the outfit's spy operations in the area as they discovered that they were getting false reports for months. Believing that there is a mole within their Shenyang branch, Han is tasked to weed the traitor out starting with their leader, Ji Kang-in (Sol Kyung-gu) or nicknamed Yaksha. Han soon finds out the real reason for the false reports and must try to piece together the real conspirator in his midst.
We felt that "Yaksha: Ruthless Operations" was trying its best to be the kind of spy film that will leave you second-guessing who's the good ones from the bad ones. But in reality, the film failed spectacularly in this aspect. Not only were the traitors pretty obvious (we guessed them from literally from a mile away) but the road to getting to the truth wasn't really that interesting or comprehensible. This film were littered with nooks and crannies about the interactions between North Korea, South Korea, and Japan that could have been interesting if provided in a more straight-forward fashion. But alas, this wasn't the case and even after the credits rolled, were still left dumb-founded with a lot of the story elements. To top it all off, there were a lot of things that happened that went beyond logic - even for an action film. Luckily, what "Yaksha: Ruthless Operations" lacked in its narrative, it happily exchanged with great action. There wasn't a dull moment as soon as our lead character Han arrives in the city of Shenyang as he finds himself in the middle of a battle between spies. The fights used guns and fists but the mix of Han's inexperience on the field provided some unexpected comic relief that we actually appreciated. Overall, "Yaksha: Ruthless Operations" wasn't that bad. Just don't expect it to make any sense story-wise and logically then you'll find yourself in for a thrilling ride.
Rating: 3 and a half reels
Why you should watch it:
- the action was fast-paced and well-executed
Why you shouldn't watch it:
- the story was a little bit too complex for our taste
Yaksha: Ruthless Operations Movie Review: An Action That was Thrilling as it was Confusing
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