Buddy cop action comedy ‘Midnight Runners’ hides a subtle social issue in its youthful energy from the two lead Korean actors - Park Seo Joon and Kang Ha Neul.
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Buddy cop action comedy ‘Midnight Runners’ hides a subtle social issue in its youthful energy from the two lead Korean actors.
As students at Seoul’s prestigious Police University, they train to be righteous policemen in the future, but a rare night-out turned unexpectedly dark, they realised that the school’s training may come to good use after all.
The film stars two of Korea’s heartthrobs - Park Seo Joon, who plays a slow-witted and a rash cop, and Kang Ha Neul who plays a bookworm nerd who is easily swayed by his surroundings. Both of the young men aren’t exactly your typical cops you would want to hire for bodyguards, but their boyish enthusiasm proves that the force lacks just that.
After a nightclub escapade, the duo chanced upon a girl whom was abruptly kidnapped. Their pleas fall on deaf ears as the police are preoccupied with another case involving the family member of their higher-ups. Using leads and pieces of evidence they could find, they realised that the one-off abduction of a young woman leads to a dark territory of a black market organ harvesting-and-selling organisation.
Park and Kang’s chemistry as a mismatched pair is one of the highlights of the movie. While both are charming and quirky in their own rights, they complement each other very well - be it on their mission to save the young ladies or their humorous banter in chasing thieves, the young lads are the reason why this movie will do well. Apart from the slapstick comedy, which both execute fairly well, their serious and sensitive side makes up of the somewhat exaggerated expressions for a few scenes.
While Midnight Runners is considered more of a comedy than an action-drama, the tonal shift was much needed to depict the far-reaching truth about these young women forced into the exploitation of an egg donor. Beyond the face value of the absurd vice ring, lies the point in question of law enforcement and their prioritisation. Is this just a dramatised narrative solely to drive the film’s plot, or is this a subtle reflection of a social issue that needs to be shown? That’s for the cop in you to decide…
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