Review: 'Hope' delivers action and thrills at a breakneck pace, and runs through genres and ammo with ludicrous speed

The Korean action thriller “Hope” is a mystery, a monster movie, a chase picture, and a few other genres I don’t want to give away — and the biggest thrill is in how writer-director Na Hong-jin shuffles the deck moving from one to the next.

In Hope Harbor, a seaside town, the police chief, Beom Seok (Hwang Jung-min), arrives with his backwoods cousin, Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), to an odd scene: A dead cow in the middle of a road, with large bloody gashes on its body. Neither the chief or his cousin’s hunting buddies can figure out what killed the cow. Maybe a bear came out of the woods, or a tiger from a nearby preserve. 

Then the chief heads back into town and sees more carnage. Cars are upended, bodies are lying in the streets, and entire businesses are hollowed out. Soon the chief is either running toward or speeding away from the danger — some of it with his eager young officer Sung-ae (played by Hoyeon, from “Squid Game”) taking aim with the large array of weapons she’s carrying. 

For much of the film, Na is toggling between the chief and Sung-ae in town and Sung-ki and his pals in the woods — each facing different renditions of the same peril. Na keeps the tension going a good deal longer than one might expect, pumping up a furious adrenaline rush through several sustained action sequences. There’s also a surprising amount of humor, particularly of the gallows variety.

And then there’s the ending, which comes completely out of left field and still feels like an organic result of what happened before. (I’ll note that the efforts of Irish actor Michael Fassbender and his Oscar-winning Swedish wife, Alicia Vikander, are also featured in the last half hour — but I won’t say how.)

“Hope” is a welcome reminder that action movies are universal, and that Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly any more.

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‘Hope’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violent content and language throughout. Running time: 160 minutes; in Korean, with subtitles.