In 1933, after an attempted assassination of the incoming Japanese Governor-General of Gyeongseung (now Seoul), his ruthless Chief Guard Takahara Kaito (Park Hae-soo) takes the five chief suspects – all Koreans or half-Koreans – to a remote clifftop hotel to flush out the infiltrator.

Ex-police officer Murayama (Sul Kyung-gu), intelligence officers Park Chakyung (Lee Hanee), Cheon Eunho (Seo Hyun-woo) and Baekho (Kim Donghee), and the Deputy General’s over-entitled secretary Yuriko (Park So-dam) race to unmask or conceal the ‘Phantom’ among them, in an alluring combination of film noir, murder mystery and resistance action/adventure.

Inspired by Mai Jia’s novel The Message, and set, like writer/director Lee Hae-young’s previous The Silenced (2015), during the Japanese Occupation, this blends the twisty thrills of The Handmaiden (2016) with the double-dealing deceptions of Knives Out (2019) – while paying open homage to Shanghai Express (1932), released a year before this takes place. 

Anton Bitel