The Point Men

In 2006 a group of South Korean missionaries was taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The very conservative moslim Taliban are no friends of anything other than their own belief, and as soon as they find out that the hostages are not volunteers, as they make them believe, they give the other side a hard time to get them released. It results in a complicated poker game of exchanges of hostages, prisoners and money. Hyun Bin is almost like a Korean James Bond involved in this action drama that contains a few very gripping scenes. Especially one pursuit is very well made. The whole story is well told down to every detail.

...before giving up. I'm a big fan of Hyun Bin, but this script was tedious. And who were the idiot missionaries who thought it was a good idea to go into Afghanistan? I mean seriously. I get that the movie is based on a real-life incident, but all that effort to rescue people who should have known better. This is what I call a man movie. There are no female leads. It's men talking and fighting. If you are a man, you might like it. If you are a woman, maybe not.

Um, since when is there a word minimum for reviews? I'm just going to type here until I fill up the required characters. Almost done. Whew.

It's taken a while for this true story about the 2007 hostage crisis in Afghanistan to come to the screen but it was worth the wait. This movie isn't a non stop action thriller like Escape from Mogadishu. It deals realistically with the process of negotiation with the Taliban step by step with mistakes and all the back and forth dealings. This isn't boring - it's fascinating. The acting is fine. As the negotiator Hwang Jung Min is a superb actor totally convincing - check him out in Narco Saints. Hyun Bin looks sufficiently bronzed and bearded to play a Korean who has been there for a while and knows the ways of the country. Although he has one tense action sequence his character is not a superhero here and that's good. He screws up too. When it's a true story like this one you don't need unrealistic heroics. Need to understand missionaries were not welcome there because of the religious aspect but volunteers to help the people were.

Production is top notch with on location filming in Jordan and the hellish atmosphere of Afghanistan captured well. You can almost feel the heat and dust. The viewer is brought face to face with the Taliban and that's better than some of the Hollywood treatments of the subject which seem redacted and remote like Zero Dark 30. No torture here or focus on the killings. There is an overwhelming lesson here about not recklessly going into dangerous countries especially when warned. See all the trouble it caused.

It's not necessary to have lots of action to make a movie a thriller, even though the genre is action-thriller. Before watching, expected lots of action. Even though not many action or fight scene was not involved, the movie made enormous tension throughout. The plot showed, the diplomatic, humanistic points and its clashes. How much trauma can make someone stuck in past is well depicted here. How a small personal debate and reporting can provoke someone or something or some group and what outcome it can bring, is also well depicted. How much courage it takes to go through a negotiation table and how to manage the tension throughout the negotiation is portrayed very cleverly.

This is a must watch for all to understand how the Convertion game is played upon Asians. From China to India converts are spreading the virus to infect other Asians.

The real players like America Europe Arab already inflected few Asians with religion and now these infected people are reaching out to others with greater risk The start is simple a group mission to convert Afgans to church gone wrong and missionary got trapped in a setup which is already converted long back and the price is to bring these missionary people back.

Long and short sequence how afgans wants to live life happily with or without America and how Koreans missionary are behaving American agents to convert people and got caught Well plan and played.