Carter

Jung Byung-gil is the kind of director who watches a logic-defying stunt and asks, "Okay, but can we do it while falling out of an airplane with no parachute and a camera strapped to a hawk?" If you saw the opening sequence of his previous film, The Villainess (2017), you know he’s obsessed with the first-person perspective and the "one-shot" gimmick. But with Carter, he didn't just use the gimmick; he let the gimmick consume the entire 132-minute runtime. I watched this on my laptop while my neighbor was vacuuming next door, and the rhythmic drone of their Hoover actually synced up perfectly with the helicopter chase, creating a bizarre 4D experience I hadn't asked for.

Released in the thick of the "Netflix Original" era, where the algorithm frequently greenlights high-concept fever dreams that would never survive a traditional theatrical rollout, Carter is a fascinating specimen. It’s a South Korean action-epic that feels like it was programmed by an AI that was fed a steady diet of John Wick, Hardcore Henry, and three gallons of expired Red Bull. It’s exhausting, it’s confusing, and it is arguably the most ambitious mess I’ve seen in years.

The Eyeball-Melting Aesthetic

The "plot"—and I use that term loosely—involves a man named Carter, played by a terrifyingly jacked Joo Won (Fatal Intuition), who wakes up with a cross-shaped scar on his head and no memory. A voice in his ear tells him he has a bomb in his mouth and a mission: rescue a girl who holds the cure to a zombie-adjacent virus ravaging the world. From there, it’s a sprint.

The cinematography by Mun Yong-gun is where the "Contemporary Cinema" of it all really hits. We aren't talking about the elegant, invisible stitches of 1917 or Birdman. This is digital-era chaos. The camera swoops, dives, and glides in ways that are physically impossible for a human operator. It feels like a drone on a bender. One moment you're inside a van during a shootout, and the next, the camera has phased through the windshield to circle a motorcycle chase before diving under a moving train.

The laws of physics aren’t just broken here; they’re filed for divorce and given a restraining order. There’s a sequence involving a mid-air fight while falling from a plane that is so blatantly CGI-heavy it looks like a high-end PlayStation 5 cutscene. In an era where we often praise "practical stunts" (the Top Gun: Maverick effect), Carter goes the opposite direction. It embraces the digital "Volume" and green-screen madness to create something that feels entirely untethered from reality.

A Sensory Assault on the Streaming Dial

The pacing is relentless. Usually, I complain about movies being too slow, but Carter is so fast it’s almost stationary. Because the camera never stops moving, the action eventually loses its impact. When everything is "cranked to eleven," eleven becomes the new zero. Joo Won puts in an incredible physical performance, essentially acting as a human stunt-dummy for two hours straight, but the script gives him almost nothing to do other than look intensely at things.

We also get some "Global Cinema" casting that feels very much like a Netflix mandate. Camilla Belle (10,000 BC) and Mike Colter (Luke Cage) show up as CIA agents, but their dialogue feels like it was translated through three different languages and then shouted through a megaphone. It adds to the surreal, disjointed quality of the film. It’s the kind of movie that makes you miss the relative groundedness of a Lee Sung-jae performance, who plays a North Korean official with at least a shred of gravity.

The real star, or villain depending on your tolerance for motion sickness, is the editing. Even though it’s presented as a continuous shot, you can spot the digital "wipes"—a back passing the camera, a puff of smoke, a quick whip-pan. It’s impressive tech, but I found myself wondering if the movie would have been twice as good if they’d just used a tripod for five minutes.

The Weirdness of the Digital Vault

Why has Carter already started to fade into the "obscure" category despite having the full weight of Netflix marketing behind it in 2022? I suspect it's because it’s a "vibe" movie that people struggle to finish. It’s a technical showcase that lacks a soul. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a heavy metal drummer doing a twenty-minute solo: you’re impressed by the stamina, but you kind of want the song to start.

However, for those of us who track the evolution of action choreography, it’s an essential watch. There are ideas here—specifically a bathhouse fight involving about a hundred naked gangsters and a lot of cleavers—that are genuinely creative. It’s pure, unadulterated maximalism. In an age of franchise fatigue and "safe" IP decisions, I have to give some credit to a film that is this committed to being absolutely batshit insane.

Carter is a movie that I respect more than I actually like. It’s a relentless, dizzying experiment in what digital cinematography can do when the leash is taken off. If you’re looking for a coherent story or character arcs, look elsewhere—maybe revisit a classic like The Man from Nowhere. But if you want to see a man fight a horde of enemies while hanging off a bridge by his ankles, and you have a high tolerance for GoPro-style nausea, this is a curiosity that deserves a spot in your "Watched" list. Just maybe take an aspirin before the second act kicks in.