He is aimless but still on his way up
Vertigo-inducing set pieces help shape Korean disaster movie “Exit” and its distinctive threat into a simplistically digestible and ultimately predictable bigbudget outing with a slight edge.
Blatantly broad about its melodramatic ambitions, director Lee Sang-Geun’s high-stakes saga sees selfappointed loser Yong-Nam (Cho Jung-Seok), a single and unemployed millennial, evolve into a paladin when the going gets deathly tough. What he is missing in career direction, he compensates for in rock climbing prowess.
To safeguard his less than harmonious family — and Eui-Ju (Lim Yoona), the love interest who previously friend-zoned him — from the rapidly propagating toxic gas unleashed by your standard mad scientist, the heroic underdog exploits both smarts and physical strength to reach various rooftops.
Social media’s wide reach and the ubiquitous access to advanced drones move the plot forward in somewhat credible fashion. Nothing to reproach in terms of production value from Sang-Geun, everything is grand in the way Korean cinema has recurrently shown it can deliver for its own market.
Stripped of the spectacle, “Exit” is just another sappy story of an insecure boy trying to impress a girl. It’s a trite commodity embellished by genre, which is an honorable thing to be. Surely the destination is evident, but the adventure, like the route finding what YongNam needs in life, offers some amusing hurdles.
“Exit.” In Korean with English subtitles. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes. Playing: CGV Los Angeles; CGV Buena Park.