South Korean film “Ransomed” is a disappointment in more than one aspect. As a thriller, it is not particularly tense or engaging in my humble opinion, and I only came to discern more of many fictional embellishments on a real-life story behind the film. As a drama, it is often shallow and mediocre in terms of story and character, and I became more distant to it instead of really caring about its two main characters’ urgent situation.

The movie is mainly set in Beirut, Lebanon in 1987. Due to the ongoing civil war, the city became a dangerous war zone during that time, and even foreign diplomats were not so safe just like many people living in the city. As shown in the opening scene of the film, a South Korean diplomat was really kidnapped under broad daylight on one day of 1986, and he was actually gone missing for more than one year after that.

Here in this film, we get the fictional version of how this kidnapped diplomat was eventually found and then saved (Is this a spoiler?). He somehow called to the ministry of foreign affairs in the South Korean government, and his desperate coded message happens to be received by a young diplomat named Min-joon (Ha Jung-woo). Once Min-joon reports to his superiors, his superiors immediately try to find any possible way to get back the kidnapped diplomat, and they eventually conclude that they must authorize a little unofficial operation for saving him as soon as possible.

Thanks to a foreign broker introduced by a CIA agent working in South Korea, all they will have to do is 1) securing enough money for the ransom and 2) delivering the ransom to whoever is holding the kidnapped diplomat at present, but both of these two tasks turn out to be not so easy to say the least. In case of the ransom money, they need to get the permission from President Chun Doo-hwan and his right-hand guy, who has been a crucial figure in the president’s ongoing dictatorship as the chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Incidentally, the president and his government are more occupied with preparing for the upcoming presidential election and the Summer Olympics in the next year, and any unnecessary diplomatic trouble in public is the last thing they want right now.

Anyway, the ransom money is finally secured after some persuasion, but somebody must step forward for delivering it to Beirut, and that is how Min-joon enters the picture again. Just because he has been hoping to work in US instead of some other less important countries, he volunteers to deliver the ransom alone by himself for impressing his superiors, who agree to give him a position in US if he successfully accomplishes his mission.

Of course, right from when he arrives at the airport in Beirut, Min-joon realizes that he may come into a circumstance way over his head. Although he manages to evade the watchful eyes of the airport guards who are as treacherous as many militia soldiers and criminals out there, he soon finds himself in the middle of a sheer chaos shortly after managing to get out of the airport, and that is how he comes across a South Korean expatriate name Pan-soo (Ju Ji-Hoon), who has incidentally worked as a taxi driver.

After saving Min-joon at the last minute, Pan-soo naturally gets more involved with Min-joon’s unofficial operation along the story. He does not want to get himself into any kind of trouble, but he agrees to help Min-joon more after promised that he will get some reward for that later. Although it does not take much time for Min-joon to see how untrustworthy Pan-soo can be, Min-joon has no choice but to depend more on Pan-soo because, well, Pan-soo is probably the only one he can really trust right now.

The middle act of the film focuses more on their shaky alliance, but the screenplay by Kim Jung-yeon and Yeo Mi-jung often fails to develop Min-joon and Pan-soo into engaging figures onto whom we can hold till the eventual finale. Despite the solid efforts from Ha Jun-woo and Ju Ji-hoon, both Min-joon and Pan-soo do not have much human depth or personality beyond their contrasting appearance, and many of supporting characters in the film including Pan-soo’s local girlfriend are more or less than under-developed plot elements. Even in case of the kidnapped diplomat, the movie does not seem to know what to do with this unfortunate dude, and he simply remains in the background even during the climactic part, just like numerous local militia soldiers and criminals hunting for him as well as Min-joon and Pan-soo.

Anyway, the movie does not disappoint us in case of several action sequences, director Kim Sung-hoon did a fairly competent job on the whole. Although it does not reach to the level of what is intensely achieved in Ryu Seung-wan’s “Escape from Mogadishu” (2021), the climactic part is handled with enough skill and craft at least, and I wish the rest of the film were as good as this part at least.

In conclusion, “Ransomed” is not entirely without any strong point, but these few strong points in the film do not compensate much for its weak story and thin characterization, and the result is one or two steps down from Kim’s previous two films “A Hard Day” (2014) and “Tunnel” (2016). At least, it is relatively a little better than another recent South Korean hostage thriller drama “The Point Men” (2023), but that is the only good thing I can say for now, and I would rather recommend you “Escape from Mogadishu” instead.