Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Carter’ on Netflix, A South Korean Action Squall That Keeps Hitting The “Continue” Button

Carter (Netflix) can’t keep still for more than a few seconds, and we follow him all the way through this South Korean actioner’s single continuous shot spectacle. It’s not really that, of course. But that’s part of the fun as Carter piles on the action in the extreme. Writer-director Jung Byung-gil also brought us The Villainess in 2017, which itself was full of outlandish fights and bloodlettings; Jung will soon make his American action debut with Afterburn, starring Gerard Butler.

CARTER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: When Carter (Joo Won) wakes up with a gaggle of CIA guns in his face, not only does he not know why the agents are there, he doesn’t know where he is or even his own name. But he does know there’s a mysterious voice in his ear, and he listens when the woman says “Please trust me if you want to live.” South Korea has been overrun by a rabid virus known as DMZ after its spread over the border from North Korea. Those afflicted become disoriented, violent, and possessed of abnormal physical strength – essentially, they’re zombies on PCP. The voice tells Carter she’s North Korean, and secretly working with the South Koreans to create a DMZ antidote. The key is the research of Dr. Jung Byung-ho (Jung Jae–young), who cured his daughter Ha-Na (Kim Bo-min) of the virus. But Ha-Na is missing, presumed kidnapped by elements of the CIA. Will Carter find Ha-Na and ferry her safely to North Korea? Of course he will. If he doesn’t, his own daughter will be killed. Oh, and there’s also the matter of his memory being restored in the bargain, and the remote-activated bomb in his skull.

Once Carter eludes those CIA agents by crashing through two windows and landing in a bathhouse where he slashes, punches, and stabs his way through approximately 85 attackers, it’s officially on. He pushes six guys out of another window and rides their momentum to the surface, where a frantic motorcycle chase ensues. Some more close-quarters action, a brief meetup with some North Korean agents to gear up, and Carter successfully grabs Ha-Na, only to be detained by an Agency goon called Smith (Mike Colter). The CIA wants to know who Carter’s working for. They even want to know if he works for them. (Are Carter and an operative named Mike Bane the same guy? Unclear.) But there’s no time for any of that, because another motorcycle chase is on tap.

Is it really a motorcycle chase if it doesn’t morph into a three-way high-speed minivan crash door rumble? As Ha-Na becomes a pawn, pulled between the vehicles, Carter manages to kill everybody and escape to an airfield where a plane to the North awaits. Inside the jet, the tense atmosphere explodes when DMZ and double-crosses create chaos in the sky, and after a mid-air parachute fistfight becomes a gun battle with Ha-Na still as the pawn, Carter and his ward finally land in the wilds of North Korea. They’re not safe yet. Conniving army intelligence officer Kim Jong Hyuk (Lee Sung-jae) has Dr. Jung in his clutches and the means to restore Carter’s memory, but an even darker plan to weaponize DMZ for personal gain.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Continuous shot gimmickry aside, there are all sorts of references here, from the frazzled action hedonism of the Crank films and the infinity loop “fights on conveyances” style of The Fast & the Furious universe, to left-field sci-fi action like Hardcore Henry and Upgrade.

Performance Worth Watching: Mike Colter of Luke Cage and Evil renown shows up midway through Carter to offer a hand break on its nonstop pound of action and motion. As Smith, a CIA operative with questionable loyalties, he chews some scenery and engages with the single take style of Carter to show off his character’s shifty and mercurial nature.

Memorable Dialogue: “When you get your memory back, who will you blame?” Carter’s dilemma is such that he’s inclined to trust the voice in his ear, even if it’s a huge part of the mystery that’s become his life. Because the voice has also passed along another morsel he’s inclined to believe. “A lethal bomb was placed inside your mouth, with a blast radius of ten meters.”

Sex and Skin: The first action setpiece of Carter takes place in a Korean bathhouse, and it’s shades of Eastern Promises as a mass naked and near-naked melee ensues and karambits are plunged into multiple necks and chests.

Our Take: Not to call the continuous shot setup of Carter a gag, but it immediately and frequently pokes so many holes in the conceit that it’s clearly just a convenient mechanism for enacting the more and more – and more! – action that consumes the film’s bulk. An orgy of bathhouse blood begets a six body pileup and midair leaps from motorcycles onto hoods of cars or the dangling quarter panel of a speeding minivan, and there’s always a pistol within reach for Carter, though his adversaries can never seem to land a shot. (The throngs of besuited thugs with bad aim in Carter, much the same as those in the John Wick films, become a faceless mass of meat for butchering.) Often, our hero stands still, in a kind of pause mode as he downloads new directives from the voice in his ear before beginning to walk. It’s not the continuous shot trickery of filmmaking that these moments embody, but the pacing and direction of video game prompts. This effect is only heightened by the non-player characters that populate the margins of Carter – basically, anyone who isn’t Carter, Ha-Na, or a CIA or Korean spy agency thug is NPC filler.

It can be exhausting, this tiered style of hyper action. But Carter can confuse, too, when it downshifts into muddled bits of exposition about the main character’s past. It doesn’t dwell on that stuff – indeed, a lot of the plot feels like a grab bag, with parts of other films like the recent Kate and Carter writer-director Jung Byung-gil’s own 2017 actioner The Villainess – but Carter can also have trouble completing some of its action set pieces without the addition of unconvincing computer-manipulated moments. The result is primed for short attention span theater, never waiting in any moment for anything other than the impulse for another action blast to begin.

Our Call: STREAM IT. A caterwaul of action on top of, inside of, and to the side of other action, Carter is often as bewildering and exhausting as it is riotously entertaining.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges