Mission: Cross (2024)

Synopsis

Park Kang-moo (Hwang Jung-min) and his wife Kang Mi-seon (Yum Jung-ah) are having their typical morning. He’s waiting on her hand and foot, making sure she’s out of bed on time, feeding her breakfast. She’s doing her best to tolerate his clumsiness, wondering why they even stay married.

We follow them to work. He’s a mild-mannered school bus driver. She’s the head of the local police’s violent crimes division. Her crew is rabidly dedicated to their boss and dismissively refers to her husband as “Wifey Kang.”

So it’s no surprise when one of them spies Kang-moo having an animated conversation with Jang Hee-joo (Jeon Hye-jin). They tell Mi-seon her husband is having an affair. What’s the appropriate cliché? Ah yes: not everything is as it seems.

The plot splinters in multiple directions as a cascade of chases, martial arts knockdowns, misunderstandings, and coincidences lead Mi-seon and team into an investigation of misappropriated government defense funds, while Kang-woo tries to conceal his hidden past.

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All the threads eventually wrap back around as the different factions of good guys finally converge on the bad guys, some of whom you didn’t see coming.

Mission: Cross just fun to watch it all unfold. Wait till you see the unique stunt with a hose trailing behind a waste disposal truck in a tunnel. You’ve also got your typical crazy gun battles with Bad Guys Who Can’t Shoot and victims taking far more slugs than any human could absorb. Thankfully, most of the scares rely on the threat of gore rather than explicit gore. The fight choreography is particularly entertaining, especially between the female combatants.

Hwang Jung-min as the bumbling husband with a past and Jeon Hye-jin as the seemingly helpless colleague put in serviceable performances. But Yum Jung-ah is just terrific as the obsessed, take-no-guff police woman who’s got a sharp tongue and a lethal aim. It’s enough to make you hope she’s in a sequel.