Jun is a top class South Korean secret agent working for the NIS (National Intelligence Service) which is a counter terrorism agency. However, he's not happy with his current situation because all he wants to do is to draw comics for the web. His love of drawing is obvious as we always see him sketching away not only in the briefing room but even while he's doing his field work.
Accordingly, in order to follow his dreams, he decides to fake his own death during a stormy night while on a mission. Making sure that his parachute will not open, he dives into the raging ocean while his colleagues watch and he never resurfaces. Needless to say, they all believe that he's dead; even though they don't have his body, they still hold a funeral to farewell him.
Fast forward fifteen years, we discover that Jun is now a happily married man living in a small town and he even has a teenage daughter. But most important of all, he's doing what he always craved to do, drawing online comics or webtoons. However, he's not even good at his job and he gets very little money in return. Although he gets thousands of reviews everyday, they're all negative, thus turning him into a desperate cartoonist who wants to become successful.
Eventually, his daughter encourages him to draw about his past story for a change and thinking that it might actually soothe his soul, Jun sets out to create a detailed webtoon based on his secret agent life. His wife happens to read it and likes it so much that she publishes it without telling him. Nevertheless, the comics are a huge success and he becomes the talk of the town overnight. Before long, the NIS starts to take notice and they send out a team to locate him. Worse still, the leader of a terrorist group is also very keen to have his revenge.
“Hitman: Agent Jun” is an action comedy starring Kwon Sang-woo as agent Jun. Kwon is a likeable actor and well suited as the leading man Jun and he handles the action scenes adequately. Lee Ji-won, who plays Ga-Young, his rapper-wannabe teenage daughter, turns out to be a vitalizing character. She's capable in both her funny and emotional roles when call for. On the other hand, Hwang Woo Seul-hye who plays Jun's wife Mi-na, has a less challenging role as the desperate housewife, she drinks and shouts a lot and that's about all.
The most irritating character has to be the NIC director: he's always seen kicking and screaming at his poor team members and behaving silly in general. Interestingly, director Choi uses a mix of animation and live action and it works well as it is refreshing to see the back story parts render in animated comic style. During the action scenes, which are well choreographed, heavy pounding and rap music is used to accentuate more excitement.
At a running time of nearly two hours, this film moves rather quickly especially in the second half but it woud benefit from a further cut of ten minutes. It has some funny moments but offers nothing new and luckily, it's not overly slapstick in its approach.
