There is no shortage of thrills in Peninsula , Yeon Sang-ho’s spiritual successor to his wildly successful Train to Busan . From car chases to pitched gun battles and even a grim fight club between zombies and prisoners, it is all there. Peninsula , however, falls short in its treatment of the undead, who quickly become tiresome, running around snarling stupidly. They turn up like the proverbial bad pennies whenever Sang-ho needs to get his character out of a sticky situation or propel the already frenetic plot into warp speed. Like a reverse deus ex machina, the zombies swarm in to move things along or give the bad guys their just desserts.
Four years after the events of Train to Busan , South Korea is overrun by zombies and the peninsula is in quarantine. In Hong Kong, Captain Jung-Seok (Gang Dong-won) is guilt-ridden as he was not able to save his sister and nephew. Jung-Seok and his brother-in-law, Chul-min (Kim Do-yoon), are recruited by gangsters to retrieve 20 million dollars in a truck from the zombie-ravaged peninsula—capitalism, greed and crime seem to be thriving in the rest of the world.
- Director: Yeon Sang-ho
- Cast: Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, Kwon Hae-hyo, Kim Min-jae, Koo Kyo-hwan, Kim Do-yoon, Lee Re, Lee Ye-won, Bella Rahim
- Story line: A van full of American dollars has to be transported on a perilous route peppered with greedy men and ravenous zombies
- Run time: 116 minutes
Getting the truck to port seems like easy money but of course things go horribly wrong as rogue militia, led by Sergeant Hwang (Kim Min-jae) and crazed Captain Seo (Koo Kyo-hwan), look at the truck as a way of getting out of the peninsula. Two girls, Jooni (Lee Re), a wicked-cool driver, and Yu-jin (Lee Ye-won), who uses remote-controlled toys to distract and draw out the zombies, rescue Jung-Seok. When Jung-Seok meets the girls’ mother Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun), he realises he had met her before under rather terrible circumstances. The girls’ grandfather (Kwon Hae-hyo) is trying to radio for help and finally seems to get an answer from a UN officer named Jane (Bella Rahim).
The action in the looming dead factories is well-staged even if it looks like a video game. The cast is competent, looking like they mean business as they wield their nasty guns and sundry weapons. The women seem to have stepped out of a James Bond film as they stop with a screech of brakes beside various characters and tersely say, “get in”. There is even a Terminator moment with echoes of, “Come with me if you want to live”.
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Even though the deserted streets exude menace, the almost unbearable tension of Train to Busan is markedly lacking. Peninsula is a well-put-together action movie, which stops short of being great — the zombies should not have been given short shrift.
