3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Badland Hunters

2024,  Heo Myeong Haeng (feature debut) -- Netflix

Oh cool, a post-apocalyptic movie with a mysterious lone warrior figure... sort of a The Book of Eli from South Korea.

Opening Credits. Waitasec, that is the apartment from Concrete Utopia. 

<grabs the Google Machine> 

This ... is... a sequel / spin-off ?!? OK, I am in.

But its not really, more like, "Well, we have this expensive set, so why not use it for another movie...."

So yeah, an earthquake happened. Buuuut before we get to that, a Mad Scientist is being arrested for the experimentation he has been performing on human subjects in order to save his dying daughter. It involves lizards. I think we can get where that is going to go.

Now we get the earthquake which destroys the building the Mad Scientist was in.

The "badland hunters" are Nam San (Ma Dong-Seok, Eternals) and his young friend Choi Ji-Wan (Lee Jun-Young, Love and Leashes). The former is skilled, tough, and massive, a Dave Bautista analog for South Korea. His sidekick is a cocky teenager. They all live in a community of survivors built around a collection of buses. The movie wants to go for a desert warrior vibe, for at least a bit, but since its amidst the ruins of collapsed Seoul, they explain the dust & sand on a recent drought. But no matter, they dispense with the ruins and dust and sand pretty quickly when they arrive at the lone standing apartment building. That is where the bulk of the movie takes place.

Why do they go there? Well, since the last movie, the "Lord of the Flies" residents have been supplanted by the Mad Scientist and his military flunkies. They have been hunting the ruins for teenagers that they coerce into moving to their domein with promises of water, food and education. Its been long enough that people know there is no help coming, but these Bad Guys are clean, polite and claiming to represent some form of government. They take Choi Ji-Wan's crush Han Su-na. Nam San doesn't trust them so the two hunters head out to retrieve her, with a brief pitstop along the way to secure some guns from gangsters, who Nam San beats up. Guys, you have GUNS; he has fists.

Anywayz, that's it for hunting in the badlands.

Suffice to say there is evil human experimentation continuing at the apartment building and Nam San has to shoot, chop and punch his way past the lizard serum jazzed up super soldiers in order to save Han Su-Na. And he has to shoot the Mad Scientist.

The movie harkens back to the 80s-90s PA movies that I kind of loved back then, and kind of like ironically now but this one is just not very good at all. But Ma Dong-Seok is solid, more than believable and the enigmatic, capable warrior. Honestly, he's the only reason to watch the movie. I really do wish there was more badlands, and more hunting, like in the poster.