Time to Hunt

In a near-future South Korea wrecked by a financial crisis, the won has crashed and slums have spread. Jun-seok is released from prison after taking the fall for a botched heist. He comes home to a city he barely recognizes, full of drugs and guns, and finds his friends Jang-ho and Ki-hoon living honest but going-nowhere lives.

Jun-seok proposes one last job: robbing an illegal gambling den that keeps stacks of US dollars. He wants to use the money to escape to a quieter life on the beaches of Taiwan. The friends bring in Sang-soo, who works at the den, and get guns through Jun-seok's contact Bong-sik. The robbery is messy but succeeds.

The aftermath turns the film from a heist story into a survival thriller. An unidentified, relentless pursuer, Han, starts hunting the group. The film becomes a chase through shadow-soaked streets where nowhere is safe.

Yoon Sung-hyun uses genre to portray a generation with nothing left to lose. In the film's world, honest work leads nowhere and crime is the only route to "living like human beings." The pursuer Han, who seems fused with the shadows, stands for a social and economic order that cannot be escaped. The film suggests that dreams of escape, here a Taiwanese paradise, are cruelly undercut by the system that created the desperation. Loyalty among friends is the only thing of value, and it is also what makes them vulnerable.

One reading treats Han as a literal criminal threat and the film as a pure genre exercise. Another treats him as an embodiment of systemic corruption, a force that makes escape impossible for the poor. A third reads the film as a story about masculine friendship, where bonds formed in poverty become fatal liabilities.

The film's economic collapse echoes South Korea's real experience of the Asian Financial Crisis, when the country defaulted on its loans and accepted concessions that many saw as humiliating. Its young, penniless protagonists fit a wider Korean cinema interest in class despair. Its Berlinale Special slot and Netflix release gave it international reach. Critics were mixed: Variety appreciated the engineered suspense and bold lighting, while others found the plot predictable. Choi Woo-shik was promoted as "the son in Parasite."

IMDb users rate it about 6.3/10. Viewers praise the cinematography, use of colour and soundtrack. Common criticism is that the film is predictable and tries to be too many things at once. One reviewer said it feels like two films stitched together: a heist movie and a horror or action chase. Overall it is a stylish but uneven genre piece.