Part of TIFF’s responsibility as a high profile international film festival is to give a North American media presence to commercial films from across the globe. This is how Cold Eyes, an unremarkable espionage thriller from South Korea, landed itself a spot in the festival’s Gala programme. A remake of Johnnie To’s Eye in the Sky from 2007, Cold Eyes is an entirely conventional movie about a specialized police surveillance team tracking down a gang of high tech bank robbers.

There’s something thematically revolting about “team” movies, in which each member of the team has only one identifying characteristic, which will forever define them in relation to the protagonist. The Fast and Furious movies are particularly bad for this, and Cold Eyes comes off as something of low-budget Korean version of the same thing, with less car chases. Actually, there is one car chase worth mentioning, because it features real cars smashing into each other. Seeing an actual collision happen was a bit jarring, given the abundance of CGI-augmented crashes that populate Hollywood action films. Other than that au naturel special effect, which really isn’t anything special, Cold Eyes has very little to offer.

Cold Eyes screens publicly on Friday, September 13 at 9:30 at Roy Thomson Hall. It will also screen on Saturday, September 14 at the Scotiabank Theatre and on Sunday, September 15, at the Bloor Hot Docs Theatre.

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Alan Jones writes about film for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @alanjonesxxxv.

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