Everytime I see the words "co-produced by Netflix" (or words to that effect) in a Korean movie's opening credits, my heart sinks a bit. Having worked at a TV network that meddled detrimentally with their shows, I feel qualified to detect inept input — often about making things a little less strange and a little more generic. In martial artist-turned-director Heo Myeong haeng's Badland Hunters what might've been an above-decent zombie movie arrives instead as a fright flick that looks like a video game. And so, like most shooter games, this action pic reveles in bullets to the head, exploding skulls, blood splatters, and bones cracking. Players — I mean, characters — recover from injuries in record time while most of the people onscreen are scenery.
I don't know whether to blame leading man Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) or bless him for Badland Hunters. He's definitely the film's saving grace, dominating every scene with a prime Bruce Willis persona that relates equal parts worldweariness and bemusement. He's also, like the title of his earlier film, Unstoppable. Whether his opponent is a body-regenerating mutant or a mad scientist with a machine gun, this loveable lug never blinks an eye. They have an arsenal, he has a butter knife? No problem. He's going to make them sorry they thought they had a chance. The human-testing in the post-apocalypse ends here!
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