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Special Delivery delivers a fun, humorous thrill of a ride

Park So-dam in Special Delivery. (Still courtesy of Golden Village Pictures)
Park So-dam in Special Delivery. (Still courtesy of Golden Village Pictures)

Length: 109 minutes
Director: Park Dae-min
Cast: Park So-dam, Jeong Hyun-joong, Kim Eui-sang, Han Hyun-min

In cinemas from 13 January (Singapore)

3 out of 5 stars

Move aside, Jason Statham, there’s a new Transporter in town.

If you’ve watched the K-drama Taxi Driver, you might think that Special Delivery was to be the sequel to actor Kim Je-hoon’s depraved revenge TV series.

Veteran actor Kim Eui-sang, who appears in Taxi Driver as well as Special Delivery, reprises his role in this movie as CEO Baek, who owns a car junkyard that secretly functions as a base for drivers to make ‘special deliveries’, similar to his role in Taxi Driver.

You wouldn’t look twice at Eun-ha, who looks exactly like your average teenage girl. Behind the plain looking façade is a young girl notorious for being an extremely skilled, hard-nosed driver who makes ‘special deliveries’ at a steep price for anyone who is asking, no questions asked.

Played by Parasite actress Park So-dam, Special Delivery posits a fairly straightforward premise around protagonist Eun-ha and the often illicit jobs that she carries out, under the watchful and cantankerous eye of CEO Baek.

Park So-dam and Jeong Hyun-joong in Special Delivery. (Photo courtesy of Golden Village Pictures)
Jeong Hyun-joong (right) steals the show as a precocious package. (Photo courtesy of Golden Village Pictures)

The first half of the movie inevitably features thrilling car chases through the run-down neighbourhoods of South Korea’s streets, as Eun-ha navigates unhesitatingly with one hand casually on the wheel while nonchalantly sipping on an Americano coffee, occupants screaming for their lives in the back seat of her vehicle.

Even as she unerringly finishes job after job related to mobs and gangsters, she is tasked to deliver a corrupt baseball player Du-shik (Yeon Woo-jin) to safety as he is being pursued by a mob boss (Oh-ryoong) who he stole money from.

It is child actor Jeong Hyun-joong who truly stole the spotlight as Du-shik’s son Seo-won, who gets caught in the crossfire between pursuing mobsters intent on retrieving a bank account fob which somehow finds its way into Eun-ha’s possession.

The precocious Jeong shows off an adorable wit and impeccable comedic timing as he bawls, burps and wets his pants while Eun-ha struggles to fend off the violent mobsters hot on their tail, while showing off some great chemistry between the duo with her protective older sister vibes.

Korean Nigerian actor Han Hyun-min (So Not Worth It) also makes an appearance with his earnest acting and native Korean language mastery which wowed the movie audience.

It’s just a pity that the second half of the movie involved far too many scenes of gratuitous violence and spraying blood, and even a gruesome torture scene. Granted, the movie has mobsters in it and director Park Dae-min probably wanted to take it to the next level and dip his toes in pushing the envelope.

However, I felt that the violence was wholly unnecessary and detracted from the plot at the expense of a promising sub-plot involving actress Yum Hye-ran, who plays a senior police official investigating her colleague for his potential ties to the mob.

That said, Special Delivery definitely delivers a fun, humour-laden thrilling ride.

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