Five strangers are the beneficiaries of organ transplants.
More than a life-saving gift, each of them is unwittingly bestowed a superpower, dependent on which organ they received from this mysterious donor. On their roads to discovery, they learn that a sixth donor, an enigmatic, but aging, cult leader, was the sixth recipient of an organ which enables them to suck the lifeforce out of any living person or object.
Revitalized, they are now determined to collect the other five organs, no matter the cost to the others. These five ‘heroes’ must band together and overcome their differences if they are to stop this threat to their lives, the country, and indeed, the whole World.
Wan-seo is our central character in this story. The recipient of the donor’s heart, the young girl is under the ever-watchful eye of her overprotective, widower father, who watched his daughter lie sick in bed for a year, waiting for her transplant. A heart monitor strapped to her wrist sends him real-time updates, from which he is always in panic mode if it goes too high. Her heart may be beating regularly now, but her father is virtually suffocating her.
Wan-seo does not have any friends because she missed a year of school, so when she finds these other four recipients, their common bond grows into this often reluctant friendship. On the road to discovering each other and the extent of their gifts, they will become a team and a group of friends that she has been waiting for. More than discovering and honing in on their superpower, everyone will gain a sense of purpose, a path to redemption, or a realization of self. Everyone on this makeshift superhero team is on a path of self-discovery.
Directed and written by Kang Hyoung-chul, Hi-Five is bloody hilarious. So funny. The script is chock-full of joke after joke after joke. When you are not thrilled by the action set pieces and the superhero visuals, you are laughing your face off. Part of that enjoyment also comes in wonderful music cues that we need to give credit to. If your audience gets to listen to Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins and gets Rick-rolled while watching your movie, then you have done an excellent job, in our books.
Korean cinema has tapped into something special when it comes to superpowered characters and action movies. There is an understanding of energy and motion, seemingly taking cues from manga and anime’s disregard for the laws of physics and motion, that makes them massively exciting to watch. Maybe it is simply watching normal human beings, bestowed with superhuman gifts, throwing each other through walls and across cavernous rooms that makes it stand out from muscles in tights, striking poses for the camera. Costumes do not make the hero or the villain in their eyes, and we are here for it.
If you are looking for a superhero movie that stands out from the exhausting dreck that has been coming out of Hollywood, one that is not concerned with delivering a brand over something truly entertaining, then Hi-Five is the superhero movie you have been waiting for. It injects fun and thrill back into the superhero genre with ease, with non-stop laughs and stand-out action set-pieces, culminating with a climax that will make you cheer out loud.