Although he was on his best way to become an architect and had even completed his studies, eventually his passion for cinema and making movies was too strong to resist so that Pak Dae-min became a director. When asked about his main sources for inspiration, he talks at length about his love for the works of such directors as Takeshi Kitano or Bong Joon-ho, but also his aim to make a Hollywood-like blockbuster in the veins of Steven Spielberg. After “Private Eye” and “Seondal: The Man Who Sells the River”, “Special Delivery” (also known as “Special Cargo”) is his third feature and already screened at film festivals such as Rotterdam International Film Festival, Fantasy Filmfest Nights and Udine Far East Film Festival. Considering his aforementioned goal, “Special Delivery” is certainly a step in the right direction, combining fast-paced action with drama and a great central performance by Park So-dam, an actress popular since her role in “Parasite”.
Signature Entertainment presents “Special Delivery” on Digital Platforms, out next month on August 22, 2022.
For many years, Jang Eun-ha (Park So-dam) has been a driver for a company specialized in deliveries of a very particular nature, such as providing escapes for bank robbers or transporting dangerous goods. Given her impressive talents behind the wheel, Jang has been making quite a living in her profession and, despite her at times odd mannerisms, convinces also with her punctuality and professionalism. Her recent job demands her to pick up two passengers from a remote area in Seoul and bring them to a harbor in the north of the country, making sure they get their ship out of Korea. However, when she arrives at the destination where she is supposed to meet her passengers, only a kid, Seon-won (Jeong Hyun-jun) gets into her car, visibly scared and chased by a group of gangsters.
Without having time to think twice, she manages to escape with her sole passenger, little by little finding out what kind of job she has actually agreed to. Seon-wo is the son of a man who was doing sports bets, earning a lot of money for the likes of Jo Kyung-pil (Song Sae-byeok), a corrupt cop, who is now after his former employee that wanted to steal from him. Realizing her responsibility for the child on her passenger seat, Jang tries to come up with a plan to get him out of the country, with Jo's men already on her tail.
Essentially, “Special Delivery” is pretty much what you would expect from a modern South-Korean genre flick. Similar to, for example, Kim Chang-ju's “Hard Hit”, the mixture of action and drama, which is something we have come to know from the country's film industry, is combined with a certain speed in visual storytelling, quite fitting given the milieu of the main protagonist. In her first main role, Park So-dam plays Jang with a distinct boldness and coolness, while also giving off hints to her character's emotions and backstory, which is one of the main reveals in the last third of the movie. Seemingly a female version of Ryan Gosling's driver in “Drive”, Jang is always in control, even in the midst of a hectic chase with gangster and bullets firing from every direction.
Although Park Dae-min's feature suffers from the same kind towards narrative exhaustion, with especially the middle part lacking the same kind of drive (pun not intended) as the other parts, “Special Delivery” has many redeeming aspects apart from the central performance. Urbanity, as in many genre features from Korea, is shown like a trap, with chase sequences highlighting the maze-like structure of the nation's capital, while also adding a much welcome breeze of local colour to the narrative. The combination of Hong Jae-sik's cinematography and Kim Sun-min's editing creates a great amalgam of speed, urbanity, light and darkness which make “Special Delivery” a solid genre flick, which really does not need the hint at Korea's history in its final act.
In the end, “Special Delivery” is a great blend of action and thriller. Apart from its overall design and the solid central performance by Park So-dam, Park Dae-min's third feature as director is one step closer to his dream of making a Hollywood-like blockbuster, if only he could contain the tendency to give away too much or adding aspects which really can be left out.
