The Wolf Brigade could have been an interesting movie about a rocky reunification between North and South Korea with politicians and civilians pulling in different directions. What we were given was a mess of a story that could never quite figure out what it wanted to be.

The Wolf Brigade is a high powered, deadly force of men whose job it is to crush the sect opposing reunification. It’s not their job to care if the people are innocent or should have a voice in their country’s future. But there’s always one guy whose conscience can’t be stomped out and Lim is that soldier. This story ends up being his story of independence and redemption.

If the movie hadn’t started out with nearly an hour of what turned out to be largely confusing and at times boring exposition, I would have rated it higher. Instead it didn’t get any traction until an hour into the movie. A movie shouldn’t take an hour to figure out who was going to be the focus of the film.

After the exposition was out of the way it became a straight action film with almost zero character development or explanation yet I did become caught up in the typically unrealistic gun fights and car chases. Some of the fights did drag on too long. There was a lot of carnage.

The cinematography, sets, and costumes were all high quality and the acting was on point for this type of film.

I feel like my score is just for the second half of the movie and I should have rated it lower given the convoluted plot and lack of character development.

One character said, “We aren’t humans in wolves’ clothing, we are wolves in human clothing.” I’d have to disagree as he was giving wolves a bad name. Humans need to own their own deadly and bad behavior. And the writers needed to own their responsibility for a story that could have been much better.


12/8/22