PARASITE star Park So-dam returns in South Korea’s new vehicular action crime film
In the tradition of The Transporter and Baby Driver comes Special Delivery, an exciting chase-filled action film from South Korea which recently screened at Fantasia International Film Festival.
The film stars Park So-dam, who came to international prominence as the daughter of the family in Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, as Eun-ha, a highly skilled — and expensive — delivery driver who specializes in transporting people and goods — often illegally — for high value clients.
Eun-ha gets plunged into a perilous situation when she’s hired by a VIP to transport him and his young son Seo-won — but he’s murdered at the pickup, leaving her saddled with the boy and in the crosshairs of ruthless gangsters.
Turns out the guy was involved with the mob and stole millions from them — now stored on a flash drive that he handed off to the kid before getting plugged.
While at first detached from the situation as a business transaction, Eun-ha and her handlers soon become protective of young Seo-won, choosing to defend him even though that means taking on the mob and the crooked police detective who is secretly pulling the strings.
I have a soft spot for films where a reluctant antihero chooses to be protective of a targeted child — Leon, The Man from Nowhere, Birds of Prey, the better half of the Zatoichi catalogue. It’s a bit of a trope but there’s a lot of hope and positivity in the idea that there’s a litmus test of sorts to show your true colors. Even people that might conventionally be thought of as “bad guys” are moved by a child’s innocence and a sense of justice or moral obligation.
The film’s many chase and action sequences are a lot of fun, though the last act’s showdown might catch viewers off-guard with its more explicit violence that shifts the tone to “hard R” territory versus the breezier vehicular mayhem.
— A/V Out
