Review: Midnight Runners (2017)

This past week, there's been a clip from director Kim Joohwan’s Midnight Runners circulating on social media, and this one scene—in which Park Seojoon tells Kang Haneul that girls like boys with cute smiles—was more than enough to convince me to watch it. I did so without knowing it was by the same director as The Divine Fury, of which my review was a little loosey-goosey in its stance for or against, but Midnight Runners hits its notes with a deadly accuracy by comparison.

Midnight Runners begins with the first days of two students at Korean National Police University, setting a stage for them to become fast friends on their journey to their shared goal of being policemen. Physically adept and conventionally attractive Gijun (Park Seojoon) is there simply because he can’t afford to be anywhere else, and book-smart germaphobe Heeyeol (Kang Haneul) is there to break away from the class of elites he comes from. Such stark differences in upbringing often make it inherently difficult to connect, but the two find much in common in the binding sense of displacement in their environment and their general immaturity, which allows for an effortless synergy between them in the coming two years.

This is where Midnight Runners shines. Park Seojoon and Kang Haneul have an undeniable chemistry that's a delight to behold. With their quick, familiar exchanges, synced habitual movements, and shared snorting at the impracticality of their lessons, it couldn't be more clear that these guys are 100% on the same page. In fact, they're so well matched that neither of them has a chance of finding a girlfriend despite their desires to, and they plan a boys’ night out upon learning their classmate met a girl at a club. 

When they're inevitably unsuccessful and decide to spend the rest of the night playing Overwatch, they pass a cute girl on the street and they want, nay, need to get her number. In the middle of deciding which of them will approach her, they end up witnessing her kidnapping then and there, but they can't keep up with the van on foot. Having lost sight of it, the two are left to their own devices when the Missing Persons unit is preoccupied, forcing them to rely on what they've learned to save her in time.

It quickly becomes a tipping scale between their want to save the girl in question, but also to stay within their means so as not to risk expulsion from school—they're still students after all, this isn't really their place. Midnight Runners manages to find a balance here, between its comedic elements and genuine emotion, which are difficult to weave together in this particular way. There are times where the fun is cut like a knife by some sobering realities as they uncover the horrors of their mission, but these are short-lived, softened by interjecting character quirks like a grand final fight sequence punctuated by them running back in to grab their rented equipment and avoid fines.

Midnight Runners isn't bogged down too heavily by deep sociopolitical commentary, besides the obvious critiques of the educational and police systems and the ever-present subject of abuse to women. You might come for a screwball comedy, but there's some nuance to our unconventional main characters, and it's that nuance that makes them truly relatable to viewers.

Edited by Aleena Faisal