“Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula” (반도)

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
December 21, 2020

Jung-Seok (played by Gang Dong-Won)
Min-Jung (played by Lee Jung-Hyun)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

Four years after “Train to Busan” premiered at Cannes, director Yeon Sang-Ho released the much-awaited sequel, “Peninsula.” While the latter offered action and some thrilling scenes, it lacked the taut storyline and character development of “Busan.” Still, it was a good film, in the same sense that Hollywood shoot-em-up movies are entertaining enough to watch for a couple hours.

The film starts off in a dystopian South Korea, where people are fleeing for their lives to escape their zombie-ridden country. Terrified families beg strangers to help them board a military ship that will take them to Japan. A mother pleads with an elite soldier, Jung-Seok, to at least save their young child. Not knowing who has or hasn’t been bitten by a zombie and infected, he ignores them and drives off to take his own family (sister, nephew and brother in law) to board ship.

Watching this scene play out, the first thing I thought about was the Korean War, when Koreans scattered around the country, assuming they would be reunited once the war finally ended. They had no way of knowing then that the nation would be split into two countries, and that those in the North would never again see their relatives in the South.

Flash forward a few years: Jung-Seok and his brother in law are in Hong Kong, where they are treated like vermin. When a gangster offers them a chance to make a load of money, they accept, even though it requires them to head back to Korea. They are to drive a truck full of millions of dollars in U.S. currency to a port, where they will be picked up and transported back to Hong Kong.

Why anyone would take the word of a crime lord is beyond me. But they, along with a couple other Koreans, head back to Seoul.

What happens there is a lot of the same: they encounter zombies and they kill them. Shampoo, rinse and repeat.

What this film lacks in humanity is made up with firearms and spectacular car chases — the best of which came courtesy of Jooni (portrayed by Lee Re), a teenage girl with mad driving skills. The actress was just 13 or 14 years old at the time of filming, but she had fire in her eyes as she manned a SUV and rescued Jung-Seok. Her younger sister, Yu-Jin (played by Lee Ye-Won), also was good with cars — the remote-controlled kind — a skill that proved invaluable in driving zombies away from the areas they needed to be at.

There is a small, but impactful, homage to the first film when Jung-Seok races away with a young girl in his arms — just as Gong Yoo did with his onscreen daughter.

I’m about as squeamish a person there is when it comes to gore and horror, but this wasn’t a difficult film to watch in that regard. Much scarier was all the English-speaking “actors,” whose wooden delivery killed every single mood the other actors had worked so hard to hard to convey.

Release date: The film was selected to premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. However, much like everything else in 2020, the festival was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns. It released in South Korea on July 15, 2020, followed by at U.S. release on August 21. I watched this on Amazon Prime, because there is no way I wanted to sit in a movie theater during a pandemic.

Running time: 116 minutes.

Spoiler Alert: The most heartbreaking scene occurred early on, after Jung-Seok and his family were on board the ship. While he was checking on the re-routing from Japan to Hong Kong, an infected passenger bit his nephew. When Jung-Seok returns, he sees his sister sobbing and in shock. Though she has yet to be bitten, she doesn’t want to abandon her son. When her brother tries to lead her to safety, the child grabs his mother’s arm. At that point, I knew she was going to sacrifice her life to remain with her son. I can’t imagine any parent making a different choice, unless there were other children (or dependents) to care for.

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