South Korean filmmaker Ryoo Seung-wan’s latest film “Humint” is a slick but deficient genre product. While there are a number of well-executed scenes to entertain us, the movie also feels a bit too trite and bland in terms of storytelling and characterization, and I merely followed its predictable plot turns without really caring about its story and characters during my viewing.

The movie begins with the latest operation of Manager Zo (Zo In-sung), a South Korean National Intelligence Service agent who has tried to track an international crime syndicate involved with drug and human trafficking. The opening scene shows him trying to get an important piece of information from an unfortunate North Korean woman he is willing to help in exchange for her information. However, because of her rather unstable condition, his operation gets botched at the last minute, and that leads to a devastation moment for him and his team.

Anyway, based on what that North Korean woman said to him, Zo comes to learn more about that international crime syndicate in question. Its main operation site is Vladivostok, a port city which is located near the border between Russia and North Korea. After reporting more about his investigation to the chief of his agency, he immediately goes to Vladivostok, and we soon see him working on getting anyone suitable enough to be a human intelligence, or “humint”, for him.

When Zo encounters a North Korean restaurant employee Seon-hwa (Shin Se-kyung), nothing much is exchanged between them on the surface at first, but, of course, she is later recruited by him due to a desperate personal reason. Thanks to her, Zo gets more information on that crime syndicate and how closely it has been associated with some corrupt North Korean officials.

Meanwhile, things become more complicated with the arrival of Park Geon (Park Jeong Min), a North Korean State Security official sent for investigating on the human trafficking across Russo-North Korean border. While he quickly arrests a North Korean broker, Park instantly senses something fishy about Hwang Chi-seong (Park Hae-joon), the North Korean consul general who certainly looks suspicious right from his very first scene in the film. Because of Hwang and his men, Park is frequently blocked in his investigation in one way or another, and it also turns out that he was once in a relationship with Seon-hwa, who is not so pleased when she comes across him at her workplace.

As she is taken by that crime syndicate for getting sold to somewhere just like many other unfortunate North Korean women, the movie expectedly follows the footstep of many other similar action thriller movies such as, yes “Taken” (2008). Both Park and Zo become all the more determined to find and then save Seon-hwa by any means necessary, and that certainly leads to a lot of actions to be unfolded across the screen.

Around this narrative point, we are supposed to care more about the main characters, but Ryoo’s screenplay often stumbles due to its thin characterization. While Zo looks quite dedicated to his work and protecting his informant, we never get to know more about him besides that, and the same thing can be said about Park, who mostly looks stoic and firm as required even when Seon-hwa is in grave danger right in front of him at later in the story.

In case of Seon-hwa, she also remains to be more or less than a plot element just like several other minor female characters in the story. The movie also feels rather uncomfortable when it depicts how she and several other unfortunate North Korean women are cruelly handled by the members of that international crime syndicate, and it only shows a bit of consideration when they are thrown into more danger during its climactic part.

If you have seen any of Ryoo’s previous works such as “The Berlin File” (2013), you know that he is a skillful action movie director, and he surely provides several good action scenes to impress you. In case of an intense physical action scene, the two performers on the screen look fairly believable as their characters fight along the staircase of some shabby building, and you may overlook for a while that their characters did not need to fight with each other from the very beginning. When the story eventually arrives at the finale, Ryoo pulls all stops as expected with lots of bangs and crashes to rattle us, but we seldom get confused as closely following the busy actions among its several main characters.

The four main cast members of the film try to fill their broad archetype roles as much as possible, but they are all limited by their superficial roles in one way or another. While Zo In-sung does not have much to do except looking serious or frustrated throughout the film, Park Jeong-min manages to bring a bit of personality to his part, and Park Hae-joon often goes over the top with his cartoonish villain character. Although she brings a bit of tenderness to the film, Shin Se-kyung is sadly stuck with her thankless role, and that reminds me again of how many of South Korean genre films have been seriously flawed in terms of female characters.

In conclusion, “Humint” is dissatisfying mainly because it does not have enough substance and personality to carry its competent actions, and the overall result is one or two steps below “The Berlin File” and several other better works from Ryoo. Although it is not wholly without entertainment, Ryoo could do better than this as recently shown from “Escape from Mogadishu” (2021) and “Smugglers” (2023), and I can only hope that I will be more entertained in the next time.