The Hunt (Korean: 사냥; RR: Sanyang) is a 2016 South Korean action thriller directed by Lee Woo-cheol, written by Cheon Jin-woo, and starring Cho Jin-woong and Ahn Sung-ki.[1]
The film was launched by Lotte Entertainment, South Korea’s second largest film conglomerate, in March 2016. It was produced by Kim Han-min, the director of Roaring Currents.[2] Big Stone Pictures drew attention for using crowdsourcing to raise funds for the film’s production, garnering over three hundred million won within a single day.[3]
When gold is discovered in a remote area, a team of miners led by Park Dong-geun (Cho Jin-woong) comes into conflict with a woman who claims that her sons owns the land. The woman is murdered, and her granddaughter Kim Yang-soon (Han Ye-ri) and local hunter Moon Ki-sing (Ahn Sung-ki) get caught up in the conflict, with Dong-geun commanding the gold seekers to flush out the witnesses and Moon using his hunting skills to protect his neighbors. Moon, the only survivor of a coal mining accident that left him traumatized and isolated, often remembers the dying wish from a fellow miner to protect and look over young Yang-soon.
Filming began September 13, 2015 and finished December 15, 2015. The Hunt was released on June 29, 2016, and grossed $4,422,347 at the South Korea box office.[4] The film was featured at the 2016 London Korean Film Festival; Projected Figures critic Anton Bitel described the movie as “a mash-up of genres – explicitly referencing First Blood (1982) and Deliverance (1972), but also bringing in a rich seam of melodrama with traces of the supernatural, and with a substrate message about self-sacrifice and continuity being a community’s richest treasure.”[5]