This may be the very last Netflix movie I ever review so enjoy it.
“Yaksha: Ruthless Operations” is a South Korean-based action thriller with a cliché setup and some colorful set pieces. Thanks to COVID, the film could not be released in traditional theaters and was handed off to Netflix. While the film is far superior to the normal junk-like quality we get on Netflix, the story isn’t very original for those looking for something fresh.
The plot of this film is set around Ji-hoon (Park Hae-soo) who is a prosecutor sent to Shenyang, China to look into the operations carried out by Kang-inn (Sol Kyung-gu), also known by Yaksha. Ji-hoon was warned by the Director about the things that can go wrong if he goes there but, he went there anyway seeing as this is his last chance as an opportunity to get back his job as a Prosecutor.
When he reaches Shenyang, he finds out that the conditions are not as simple as mentioned in the reports. He finds himself in the middle of an international conflict between South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and China. Ji-hoon realizes that the people he is investigating aren’t as bad as he was told and the people who are taking orders have more secrets than they are letting on.
The film is pretty generic when it comes to character motivation. Ji-hoon is the by the book cop who is so by the book he is almost unbelievable as a character. He is played opposite Kang-inn who is pretty much a cop who operates at the beat of his drum. The moral conflict between the two is what drives the story while throwing in some baseline secondary characters.
The story flows well and the action is pretty solid. The problem that holds the movie back is the fact that the film ditches its more compelling storylines in favor of a cookie-cutter spy film that hits all of the tropes. The cinematography of Yaksha: Ruthless Operations is stellar and makes an average film look exciting.
“Yaksha: Ruthless Operations” is a good film to kill some time but don’t expect anything more than that.
3/5
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