A memory-challenged man jumps parachute-less from an airplane on fire. On the way down, he has to battle the armed bad guy for a parachute and the unconscious little girl who may or may not be his daughter (a side effect of the memory issues). The mid-air gun fight doesn’t dissuade him. He is successful in thwarting the bad guy, collecting the girl, stealing the chute, and opening it just in time to land safely … in the back of a speeding swine trailer in the middle of North Korea only to discover there’s already a Mad Max-like post-apocalyptic biker gang already trailing him and out for blood.
This is precisely what Carter is: a non-stop thrill ride of blood, explosions, and well-choreographed action scenes. Just like President Carter lost control of his narrative shortly into his term, I lost the “plot” to Carter about 15 minutes in; what I didn’t lose was the understanding that in a film as insane as this one, plot doesn’t matter.
I suppose I need some details plot here to let you know what you might be getting into: Carter (Joo Won), a muscular, well-inked action figure, wakes up naked in a pool of blood with no memory, fresh stitches at the base of his skull, and several trained agents with guns on him. There’s a call. The voice implores him to give the booby-trapped phone to the nearest agent, which effectively takes out the first line of captors. Then the magical voice in his ear urges him to jump out the window because a bomb is going to blow in five seconds.
So he does. And he crashes into a bathhouse for mobsters so the film can recreate the hammer scene from Oldboy with naked men. And all the while, we still have no idea who Carter (fantastic Korean name, btw) is, what motivates him aside from self-preservation, who hunts him, or why he has no memory. Oh, and there’s something of a zombie apocalypse going on. Can we agree that at some point in an all-action film, the plot might not matter?
Much of the action in Carter is first person, likely filmed with a helmet cam or something similar, which makes the
film itself something of a combination of both Total Recall and Hardcore Henry. As I say, I lost the plot somewhere between the truck-van-truck handfighting scene (sorry, I’m not describing this properly; imagining three large moving vehicles all side-by-side with sliding open doors and a melee going on that constantly switches among the vehicles) and the doomed plane destined for North Korea. There are two little girls Carter ends up having to save during the course of 134 minutes, occasionally both at the same time. One may or may not be his daughter. Both may or may not be his daughter. We may never know. HE may never know.
Carter is an insane film. It was pieced together x-gamers and action film junkies who clearly wrote the thing with statements like, “What if we …” And then the production crew saying something like, “Yeah, we make that happen” and the actual screenwriter responding, “How exactly am I supposed to resolve that?!” while being ignored. The answer is it doesn’t matter. Turn your brain off and strap in for a wild ride. See Carter on the biggest screen you have available at your disposal.
Meet inked-up Korean action demon Carter
Who could be hero, villain, father, mark, or martyr
His mind is gone, you see
During this chaotic spree
Will it resolve? Well, *that’s* a non-starter
Rated TV-MA, 132 Minutes
Director: Byung-gil Jung
Writer: Byeong-sik Jung, Byung-gil Jung
Genre: Rollercoaster
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Action junkies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who enjoy well-crafted plots
