Hi-Five Review: An Origin Story on Fast-Forward

Imagine a life-saving organ transplant came with a strange side effect: a superpower. That is the delightfully simple premise of Hi-Five, a film where each hero’s new ability is tied directly to the organ they received. A new heart grants superhuman strength, while a lung transplant provides the power of hurricane-force breath.

This playful approach to a well-worn genre is the signature of director Kang Hyeong-cheol, the filmmaker behind beloved Korean hits like Scandal Makers and Sunny. His focus has always been on heartfelt character comedy, and he brings that same sensibility here.

The story puts this newly-formed team of misfits against a villain born from the same miracle, a man who wants to steal their newfound gifts for his own sinister purpose. The result is a superhero film that happily sidesteps the grim, world-ending stakes of its contemporaries. It is a story that chooses small-scale fun and breezy action over the weight of an epic.

An Origin Story on Fast-Forward

The film assembles a wonderfully specific cast of characters, a quintet of everyday people far removed from the chiseled gods of most comic book fare. We meet Wan-seo, a determined high school taekwondo student whose new heart gives her superhuman strength.

There is Ji-sung, a struggling screenwriter who can now produce gale-force winds with his new lungs. We have the quintessential slacker Ki-dong, whose transplanted corneas let him manipulate electronics, a power he promptly uses to cheat at gambling.

Rounding out the group are the earnest factory foreman Yak-sun, whose liver grants him the ability to heal others by taking on their wounds, and the cheerful yogurt vendor Sun-nyeo, whose newfound power remains a tantalizing mystery.

Every team of heroes needs a villain, and Hi-Five creates one from the same strange miracle. The final donated organ, a pancreas, goes to Yeong-choon, an elderly and comatose cult leader. He awakens not just healed but with the terrifying ability to drain the life force of any living thing he touches.

As he consumes more energy, he grows progressively younger and more powerful, transforming into a dangerous figure with a singular goal: to absorb the powers of the other five recipients for himself.

What truly sets the film’s structure apart is its absolute refusal to dawdle. In an age where superhero origin stories dedicate entire films to setup, Hi-Five gets its team together in what feels like minutes. There is no extended period of discovery or existential angst; the powers are a new reality, accepted with a shrug and immediate curiosity.

For anyone who has checked their watch during yet another training montage, this narrative velocity is a gift. The choice to jettison the standard formula allows the film to jump directly into its most appealing aspect: the chaotic, funny dynamic of these misfits learning to work together.

Slapstick with Superpowers

The comedy in Hi-Five doesn’t come from witty banter you might find in a modern American superhero film. It is a far more physical, classic style of humor that lives in the character interactions. Much of the laughter is generated by the bickering between Ji-sung and Ki-dong, whose dynamic is built on petty grievances like who ate more chicken wings.

The film finds its rhythm in these small, absurd moments, like when the two use their powers to play a recorder from opposite ends of a playground. Some gags feel pulled from a much older playbook, including a tired and misplaced “accidental kiss” sequence that lands with a thud, showing that not every joke lands with modern precision.

When the comedy and action combine, the film achieves moments of pure, inventive delight. The standout is a chase sequence involving Sun-nyeo’s humble yogurt cart, which Wan-seo propels through narrow city streets at impossible speeds while the others hang on for dear life. The scene’s genius is cemented by its soundtrack: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Yes, the film deploys a full-blown Rickroll in 2025, and it is glorious. Another clever sequence involves Wan-seo’s taekwondo-master father taking on a gang of thugs. He believes his skills are sharper than ever, unaware his daughter is secretly using her super-strength to guide his punches and kicks, a setup that is both hilarious and surprisingly sweet.

This anarchic energy reminds me of the best moments from Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, where reality bends for the sake of a great visual gag. The visual effects lean into this, creating a rubbery world where the laws of physics are merely suggestions. This is not the gritty, realistic impact of a modern blockbuster; it is the joyful, hyper-real bounce of a classic cartoon, prioritizing a good laugh over a believable punch.

The Super-Powered Heart of the Film

For all its chaotic action and visual gags, the real special effect in Hi-Five is the cast’s chemistry. The film lives or dies on us believing in this group, and the actors build a wonderfully warm and believable dynamic.

They form a bumbling, cobbled-together family that you can’t help but root for, grounding the story’s most absurd flights of fancy in something recognizably human. It is their interactions, full of petty arguments and quiet support, that give the movie its foundational strength and keep the audience invested through every strange turn.

Lee Jae-in provides the film’s anchor as Wan-seo, projecting an earnest energy that makes her the easy-to-like center of the group. Much of the comedic heavy lifting falls to Ahn Jae-hong and Yoo Ah-in, whose journey from mutual annoyance to a grudging friendship forms a classic buddy-comedy arc. Providing the warm center is the ever-reliable Ra Mi-ran, who slips perfectly into the role of the group’s cheerful matriarch.

A special mention must go to Oh Jung-se as Wan-seo’s clueless father. He practically steals every scene he is in, delivering a performance that is both hilarious and full of heart. While Kim Hee-won’s character feels a bit underdeveloped in comparison, the strength of the core ensemble is more than enough to carry the film.

A Case of Tonal Whiplash

While the film succeeds on the charm of its cast, it struggles to reconcile the two movies living inside it. Sudden, sharp turns from comedy to tragedy are a feature of modern Korean cinema, a trait that can be powerful when handled with care. Here, however, the balance feels unsteady.

The main plot is a breezy, feel-good adventure. But the villain’s world is a grotesque organ-harvesting cult, and the film presents this element with a grim seriousness that sits awkwardly next to the slapstick. These scenes feel imported from a much darker thriller and disrupt the lighthearted fun the movie works so hard to establish.

This friction extends to the heroes’ own stories. The film will occasionally pause its action to reveal a truly tragic backstory, like the circumstances that led to Sun-nyeo’s transplant. These detours into heavy melodrama feel unearned and create an emotional dissonance for the audience.

When a film asks you to laugh at a cartoonish chase scene one moment and reflect on grim personal tragedy the next, the resulting experience can be jarring. The light and dark elements never quite merge, creating an inconsistent emotional texture throughout the runtime.

The Director’s Voice Wins Out

The film’s third act regrettably trades its quirky, small-scale charm for a more conventional large-scale CGI battle. The finale is competently executed, but it feels like a sequence we have all seen before, and it goes on for a bit too long. The showdown does provide at least one satisfying payoff: we finally discover Sun-nyeo’s mysterious power.

But even this standard ending cannot erase the film’s distinct personality. It remains a Kang Hyeong-cheol film, defined by its warmth and focus on its misfit characters. Its specific Korean flavor and feel-good energy make it a welcome alternative to its Hollywood counterparts. With threads left dangling about the powers’ origins, the movie leaves a lingering sense of what could have been.

“High Five” opened in South Korea on 30 May 2025 through Next Entertainment World and expanded across Southeast Asia during the second week of June before reaching the United States and Canada in a limited Well Go USA rollout on 20 June 2025. The 120-minute feature is screening only in cinemas for now; digital and streaming plans have not been announced.

Full Credits

Director: Kang Hyeong-chul

Writers: Kang Hyeong-chul

Producers and Executive Producers: An Hee-jin, Anna Lee

Cast: Lee Jae-in, Ahn Jae-hong, Ra Mi-ran, Kim Hee-won, Yoo Ah-in, Oh Jung-se, Park Jin-young, Shin Gu, Jin Hee-kyung

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Choi Chan-min

Composer: Kim Joon-seok