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Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: February 14th, 2023.
Director: Kim Hong-sun
Cast: Seo In-guk, Jang Dong-yoon, Sung Dong-il, & Jung So-min
Year: 2022
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Project Wolf Hunting – Movie Review:
Director Kim Hong-sun’s 2022 film, Project Wolf Hunting, opens in Manilla where news reports get us up to speed on what’s happening: a group of forty-seven dangerous criminals that have fled Korea to The Philippines to avoid prosecution have all been rounded up and are being extradited to Busan in their homeland to face prosecution. This gang of the baddest of the bad are loaded inside a cargo ship and handcuffed for the duration of the trip. Accompanying them are a gang of cops, a doctor and a nurse. Things take an unexpected turn when some federal agents replace some of cops and send them on their way.
Early in the film, we realize that one of the prisoners, Park Jang-du (Seo In-guk), is up to something and sure enough, he’s smuggled in a pin in his mouth that he coughs up and uses to pick his handcuffs. A few short minutes later, he’s freed the rest of the prisoners and there’s a fairly massive brawl going on between the good guys and the bad guys. While all of this is going on, tensions start to rise between Park Jang-di and a quiet prisoner named Lee Do-Il (Jang Dong-yoon).
Meanwhile, the doctor learns that deep in the bowels of the vessel, a clandestine organization is shipping a massive, hulking man-thing that has its eyes stapled shut. He administers a shot to this thing, and then goes on his way, but when that man-thing, dubbed Alpha (Gwi-hwa Choi), gets free, he turns out to be a genetically altered killing machine with the strength of five men and the senses of a wolf. Once he starts to make his way through the ship, no one is safe.
At just over two hours in length, Project Wolf Hunting has some trouble sustaining its momentum, but credit where credit is due – once we hit the half hour mark, this turns out to be an astonishingly violent movie. When the prisoners escape and start fighting the cops, there are literal Shogun Assassin style geysers of arterial spray all over the place, and once Alpha is worked into the movie, it gets even grislier, highlighted by a pretty great scene where he rips some poor bastards arm out of its socket only to beat him to death with it.
This isn’t deep.
It tries to load in a conspiracy element and Alpha’s back story ties into some Men Behind The Sun style WWII Japanese experiments, which is a moderately interesting idea, but there’s no real character development here at all and for the first half of the movie, until the numbers are whittled down substantially, it gets difficult to tell the characters apart for that reason. Some more judicious editing and a smaller and more focused cast would have made for a more compelling narrative. Still, the levels of violence to which this movie is able to rise is impressive in its own, over the top way.
Project Wolf Hunting – Blu-ray Review:
Well Go USA brings Project Wolf Hunting to Blu-ray framed at 2.35.1 widescreen and in AVC encoded 1080p high definition with the feature using up 39GBs of space on the 50GB disc. Shot digitally, the image is obviously free of any damage or dirt. Detail is quite strong and colors look solid, though the movie’s color scheme is frequently rather grim looking, given that the vast majority of the movie takes place inside a cargo ship. Skin tones look lifelike and accurate, black levels are strong and there are no noticeable issues with compression to note. All in all, this looks pretty solid.
Audio options are provided in the original Korean and in dubbed English tracks in 24-bit DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo options with optional subtitles provided in English only. The Korean 5.1 track is definitely the way to go here, the mix hits hard and once the action starts, there’s pretty much constant surround activity going on. Bass response is tight and strong but doesn’t overpower the performers. Dialogue is always clean and clear and the effects, gun shots in particular, pack a nice punch. This is a legitimately great sounding disc.
Aside from a trailer for the feature and trailers for a few other Well Go USA properties, the disc includes two brief featurettes. The first of these is a behind the scenes piece that runs just under five minutes and which features some quick cast and crew interviews, with the director noting that they wanted to make a very raw film. There's some footage shot on set while the movie was being made included in here as well. The second featurette is called Making The Alpha and it runs a minute and a half. It's a quick look at what went into creating "a human weapon with wolf genes" by way of five hours of makeup work every day.
Project Wolf Hunting - The Final Word:
Well Go USA’s Blu-ray release of Project Wolf Hunting is light on extras but it looks and sounds really strong. The movie itself is light on plot but once the action starts, it doesn’t let up until the end. Some might find it all to be a little much, but what the movie lacks in character development it makes up for in carnage.