My Cultural Diet

It’s really quite satisfying to watch Ma Dong-seok (Eternals, Train to Busan) stride and lumber across the screen. With his bulky, imposing frame, he truly does look unstoppable as Dong-cheol, a reformed gangster who must rely on his deadly skills to start knocking heads after his beloved wife is kidnapped by human traffickers. Unfortunately, writer/director Kim Min-ho couldn’t seem to decide what sort of movie he was making. The above premise, and some of the brutal fight scenes, would seem to suggest a grim, bloody thriller à la Lee Jeong-beom’s The Man from Nowhere. But then there are moments of slapstick humor courtesy of a pair of bumbling sidekicks (Park Ji-hwan, Kim Min-jae) and even some existential philosophizing courtesy of the main villain (Kim Sung-oh). As a result, Unstoppable never feels as gripping or intense — or funny — as it seems to want to be. On a more positive note, I did appreciate that Dong-cheol’s wife Ji-soo (Song Ji-hyo) is no mere pushover; she never makes it easy for her captors but rather, gives as good as she gets.

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