The Mongolian Connection

A Mongolian cop mistake will allow an organized crime boss to go free. His only chance is a prisoner coming to Mongolia with an FBI custodying him. As always, corruption in the forces and the criminals made the delivery of the prisoner quite difficult so the three has to escape and try to survive while dealing with their own personal problems. Looks cliched; but is not. The director play with cliches but makes unexpected but very logical turns that make the movie more interesting every moment. The three unknown actors (at least for me) play their parts perfectly. The movie does not tries to be Rush Hour. There are a few humor moments; mostly product of languages difficulties; but is mostly serious and quite violent.

With Oriental movies; the fights are the best part and this one is able to maintain credibility and cut your breath away.

The sentimental part (sometimes too much in Oriental movies) is quite controlled here. The final fight has the "Honor Among Criminals" theme but not abusive and the fight is in itself fast and breathtaking

In brief; it is not a completely original story but a lot of details make it work very well and the action is intense and realist enough

As we all know, American cinema has been pretty much dead for a while now, killed by greedy studios, boring franchise sequels and political correctness. So we're forced to look elsewhere, to South Korea in particular, but Mongolians, whoever saw that coming? This movie is low budget, has no star power and while not too original, it's competently directed and edited and the end result is surprisingly watchable and better overall than most non American crime thrillers. And American ones for that matter, if we leave out Dragged Across Concrete.

Can't say that I would have enjoyed the 3-hour-long director's cut, but this wasn't the worst cliched action movie I've ever seen -- far from it. It's a movie we've seen countless times before, but it was a lot better than most of the '70s and '80s action flicks it harks back to.

Guess it's the Mongolian charm?

As a moviegoer, you're always looking for that surprise thrill from a movie you have heard nothing or very little about. Holy moly - this was it. Non-stop action from front to back, and the fight choreography in particular was exceptional (coming from someone who grew up on John Woo films). The whole thing seemed like it was made for more money than it likely was. Think of it as the "Midnight Run" of Mongolia.

Kaiwi Lyman was a standout among the cast (his comedic chops were spot on), but don't sleep on Sanjar Madi or Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam, one of Mongolia's most feted actors. All three of them were great, and the chemistry between them was clear. I'm going to keep my eye out for all of them, but mostly I'll be curious to see what director Drew Thomas does next.

Really solid movie. Glad I found it.

Not a Oscar contender but a OK story with some good fight scenes although the body count is over the top

It does also contain some good comedy

You do need to know that Mongolia does have a lot of imported cars from Japan which is quite well exploited to good effect