Codename: Jackal (2012)

Really Not Great

I want to start by saying... I am a huge Song Ji Hyo fan. I've watched "Running Man" for years and she was a favorite of mine from her very first episode of it. She's extremely talented and seems to throw herself into any challenge wholeheartedly. I have wanted to watch her acting for some time but had never gotten around to it until now. I thought starting with a movie instead of a drama would be the best way to go. Now, I think that was definitely not the right call.

"Codename: Jackal" is just not a great movie. In fact, it's not even a good movie. It's middling, and that's pretty generous in and of itself. It's an acceptable way to spend a little under two hours, I suppose, though even that is possibly debatable. I hate turning movies off once I've started them, but more than once I considered doing so for this one. I regularly checked how much time was left, just wanting to get it done with.

Any good story should have a beginning where you're introduced to the characters and key plot points, a middle where the story unfolds, and the ending where the story is wrapped up. Obviously, the middle chunk should be the majority of the story, but in "Codename: Jackal," the balance between the three is insane. You're introduced to the characters and basic plot in the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie and the ending is basically about ten minutes long. There's well over an hour of middle where some laughs are intended, but very little is added to the plot. The characters aren't really further developed or fleshed out, the story isn't expanded, and the setting never changes. Every scene is more of the same, just with different characters making appearances and different obstacles being blundered over.

I think this movie is intended to be an action/comedy. Were there funny parts? Yes, I suppose so. The humor isn't very clever or thought provoking. It's basically juvenile slapstick, maybe slightly raunchy juvenile slapstick. There were moments when I cracked a bit of a smile, but I never laughed, even though I really, really, really wanted to be able to find something about it I loved. For the most part, this wasn't the fault of the actors. They worked with what the had been given, they just hadn't been given enough or the right stuff, I guess.

For the most part, the acting is commendable. Song Ji Hyo and Kim Jae-Joong had great chemistry and were clearly doing their best with the script they were given. It felt like much of their chemistry was wasted, but that didn't stop it from being there and obvious. Han Sang-jin as "Team Leader Shin" made for a sound, frustrated straight man trying to be the ringmaster in an ongoing circus throughout the movie. Oh Dal-Su was believable as a lecherous, seasoned detective and Seo Yi-An was excellent as the brightest and most overlooked part of the task force.

The downside in the acting department came from the most secondary of characters. When I say they were chewing the scenery, I mean there were entire set pieces with chunks missing from them, it was that bad. Seo Dong-Won as the greedy hotel/motel manager was the worst offender with Ra Mi-Ran as the lazy-yet-demanding head of maid services and Joo Min-Ha's stalker character tied for second. These roles were clearly intended to be comical, but are so over-acted, they become painfully unfunny and fully cringeworthy.

The story is not great. The really, really long middle section is a whole lot of absolutely nothing. Character motivations are never made terribly clear, and that becomes even more true once the "twist-ending" is revealed. Calling it a twist ending though is a bit misleading, since I predicted it very early in my viewing as the most logical outcome.

Production made seriously odd choices. Putting the stunningly beautiful Song Ji-Hyo in an embarrassingly cheap afro-style wig for a majority of the movie is a whole choice, but not a good one, to say the least. Many of the characters looked distractingly and awkwardly sweaty throughout the entirety of the movie. Costuming was nonexistent. It looked like the wardrobe department visited a mall in the late 90's/early 00's and shopped off the rack at Wet Seal. Again, it was a choice, and not a good one.

For a movie about an idol that is played by an idol, there was remarkably little music to take note of. Ideally, the music in the movie would be a character onto itself, but that wasn't the case here. A better OST would have made some of the movies flaws more easy to bear, because if there is one thing the Korean entertainment industry really seems to do well, it's OSTs, but the ball was dropped here. I tend to buy every OST for every piece of Korean media I consume, but I have zero interest in this one.

As for rewatch value, I find none really. Nothing about it was compelling enough that I'm going to rewatch at any point. If I ever do rewatch it, it will likely be because I want to see if it was as bad as I remember it being. Listen, if you want something light and not thought-provoking, emotional, or anything at all beyond surface-level, this movie might be right up your alley. There are much better comedies and much better action movies out there, but if you're a fan of Song Ji-Hyo or Kim Jae-Joong, then maybe it's worth additional hours of your watch-time, but I don't think there's really a whole lot of rewatch potential here personally.

Overall, the movie is decidedly okay. It's not great, but it's also not the worst thing I've ever seen. An overall rating of 5 seems most fair and honest. If some out there enjoy it more than me, more power to them, but I honestly think this is mostly just a middle-of-the-road movie. Forgettable, try-hard, and a bit boring, but not the worst thing in the world.

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