A Truckful Of Dollars
Peninsula
aka Bando
aka Train To Busan
Presents Peninsula
South Korea 2020
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho
Studio Canal Blu Ray Zone B
Warning: Spoilers on the tone of the ending.
Peninsula is the third and, to date, final of the loose bunch of movies which deal, with independent characters and stand alone stories, with the same zombie virus outbreak which was the subject of both Seoul Station (reviewed here) and Train To Busan (reviewed here).
This one focuses on a guilt ridden ex-soldier Jung (played by Gang Dong-won) and his brother who are living a meaningless survival (after the loss of his brother’s wife and son in the opening sequences... as they tried to escape from the zombie infestation on a ship)... until a local mob boss puts together a team, including them, to go by boat into the zombie infested Peninsula of the title and collect a truck which was dumped with millions of US dollars in it, before it could get out. So, yeah, if this sounds familiar, it does have a similar premise to Zack Snyders Army Of The Dead, which came out a year later (and which I reviewed here).
This one is fast and furious in its delivery of the story and... as you would expect, all the things that could go wrong, do go wrong and it’s not long before Jung finds himself teamed up with one of a small family of survivors played by Lee Jung-hyun, with her daughters and father... trying to retrieve the truck and his brother, who has fallen into the hands of an evil, bread and circuses, organised bunch of survivors with a strong military presence.
Before long, we have two separate parties interested in getting the truck full of money back to the pick up boat, with everybody fighting and trying to outlive the zombies who are getting in the way of everybody. And it does what you’d expect from a modern zombie film, to be honest. It’s pretty much a body count movie with a zombie threat which is constant but, ultimately not as frightening as it possibly should be. This one isn’t quite as focussed as Train To Busan, which had a claustrophobic train carriage setting to focus on and work to its advantage. Nor is it anywhere near as cynical and bleak as Seoul Station. It’s interesting how anime and manga both seem to be able to get away with much more mature discussion points than live action movies but, then again, the same is true of their Western equivalents in places like the US and the UK so, I guess it’s all relative.
The film has some wonderful lighting at the start... a kind of neon-esque lighting when the two brothers are recruited for the task (think I just made a new word up there but, you know what I mean) and then later, it gets more muted because, in this film, it’s a known fact that the zombies can’t really see at night, so just stay quiet and they won’t be able to properly hunt you, is the thing. This results in most of the action of the film taking place at night so... yeah, like I said, it looks more pastier and muted as the film goes on.
Now there’s a lot of personally tragedy throughout the story, as various stories and characters are explored but, the one thing I was surprised at is that, relatively speaking at least, this film has a much more upbeat and almost compromised ending when it comes to the fate of four of the characters. I was expecting it to end in more tragedy and death and... it almost does before one character gets a bit of a reprieve. But that’s okay, it’s nice ot have a bittersweet win every once in a while, I guess.
And those are my thoughts on Peninsula... not as good or engaging as the previous two movies, for sure but, I had a pretty fun time with it and I’d watch it again at some point. If you are into zombie films in general then this one surely won’t fail to entertain and I am left wondering now if the director feels he will revisit any of these zombie virus tales again in the future. Time will tell, I guess.
