Yaksha: Ruthless Operations - A Spy Action Thriller with Plenty of Action and Few Twists

After heavy rain pouring Jakarta yesterday evening, I was unable to go home early to see a new movie that was just released in Indonesian cinemas. Hence I decided to watch this new film on Netflix instead. It seemed to have an interesting premise, plus I was familiar with two of the stars. My wife obviously knew more as she regularly watches South Korean TV drama but as she was still finishing her own series, I watched this by myself. Anyway, will start with it now.

Brief Story Line

Han Ji-hoon (Park Hae-soo - Squid Game TV series, Time to Hunt etc) was a straight prosecutor who after handling a major case was transferred to National Intelligence Service. He was later assigned by director Yeom (Jin Kyung - My Only One TV series etc) to China to inspect on black ops operation led by Ji Kang-in (Sol Kyung-gu - Memoir of a Murderer, The Book of Fish etc).

When Ji-hoon arrived in Shenyang, he met with the rest of the team that included Deputy Hong (Yang Dong-geun - 365: Repeat the Year TV series etc), the only female Hui-won (Lee El - When the Devil Calls Your Name TV series etc), the tough guy Jae-gyu (Song Jae-rim - Our Gap-soon TV series etc) and the youngest Jeong-dae (Park Jin-young - The Devil Judge TV series etc). While investigating what Kang-in was working on, Ji-hoon was caught in the middle of intricate spy game that involved agent from North Korea and Japanese super Agent nicknamed D7 (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi - 24 Japan, Manhunt etc).

So what would happen to them all? You can find out in this action thriller movie.

End of Brief Story Line

This movie started off brightly with some explosive actions which made me excited. As the story progressed at a slower pace, the film felt to gain momentum after Ji-hoon met with Kang-In and from that moment on, it was quite fast pace and need a bit of concentration to understand where the movie was heading.

For a movie that was categorized as action thriller, this one certainly got plenty of actions. They were mostly well crafted with lots of amazingly done gun fights, explosions, car chase and few hand to hand combat. Although the fight scenes were good but I thought Hiroyuki Ikeuchi's talent was not fully optimized (he was brilliant as the villain in Ip Man). Other than that, I was satisfied with the action sequence. And having a duration of 2 hours 5 minutes certainly gave sufficient time even if it might feel just a tinsy bit too long. Btw there was no post end credit scene here, but during the closing credits, there were intriguing scenes which should not be missed.   

The lead cast here are Sol Kyung-gu and Park Hae-soo who looked like the perfect match, where one was a cold blooded killer with nickname Yaksha, a human devouring spirit and the other was an upstanding, by the book prosecutor. The team members were OK but not sure why they were not as memorable as the main lead. In addition to the names I mentioned above, there were also other support cast such as Lee Soo-kyung (Miracle: Letters to the President etc) and Jin Seo-yun (Tell Me What You Saw TV series etc).

As for the story, this one was pretty standard and nothing really extraordinary. It was a bit complicated with few twists, but that brief action which felt like Mission: Impossible was a nice touch. I think the main attraction would be the way Ji-hoon and Kang-in were at each others throats from the start. Overall for me it was a cool enough movie with plenty of actions and not a lot of drama. It's interesting to watch and satisfying as an action thriller movie set in the spy world (not the kind of spy with lots of gadgets but the good old spy who are not worried with dirty ground work). Personally to me though, it did not seem to have that extra spark which would make this absolutely great and amazing. So if you want to have some fun watching two alpha males in a spy action movie, then you should be able to enjoy this.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars