Mantis

“If you want to protect something, then you just do it.”

i went into this film unaware that it was a sequel but i think that was for the best because i would’ve been far more disappointed with this, and i already am.

mantis tries to be a lot of things at once—a comedy movie, an action flick filled with gore, a heartfelt emotional film that focuses on its characters—and it fails at doing most of this considering its less than two hour runtime. i was excited for this because the casting was literally insane and their performances definitely carried the film, but that was the extent of this movies greatness. i absolutely loved park gyu young’s performance and i think her character was the most fleshed out, with jae-yi’s inferiority complex and struggles clearly being her driving motive and acting as the main conflict of the movie as she makes her decisions based on these emotions she’s experiencing. i also thoroughly enjoyed choi hyunwook’s performance as benjamin because he does such a good job playing these bratty and manipulative characters, similar to his character in taxi driver whom i also loved even though he was a little shit. yim si wan’s character han-ul was a very basic character who didn’t have a lot of depth but it was his acting that made him stand out when he wasn’t in an action scene. speaking of those scenes, they were enjoyable for the most part but the best one was honestly the opening scene. the final fight was also slightly memorable but mainly because of a singular shot of yim si wan’s heartfelt and anguished facial expression.

other than the points mentioned above, the rest of the movie is honestly boring. the entire movie is rushed which makes the pacing really off seeing as before i knew it an entire year had somehow passed in the span of like five minutes, there are funky shots in both the good and bad sense as some of them were fun but a lot of them looked ridiculous, and the plot tries to do a lot at once with the sort of love plot between han-ul and jae-yi, the betrayal plot, the group break up, overthrowing and recreating the killer for hire system… it’s just a mess and it’s only mildly entertaining at best.

i definitely won’t rewatch this and i wouldn’t really recommend it, but if you really want to give it a shot i’m sure you’ll at least enjoy the performances done by the really incredible actors in this.

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