“The Childe” is a flip and darkly amusing comic thriller from Korea, a tale of an impoverished Filipino boxer who laments the fact that he’s never been able to find his Korean father. Until he does find him.

It’s violent, sadistic and quite a bit of fun, thanks to the big screen debut of Korean TV star Kim Seon-ho. As a comically-cocksure, joking, grinning, chuckling and whistling hitman who interferes with or expedites this “Dad” search, he identifies himself only as “a friend.”

It’s no wonder the broke boxer Marco (Kang Tae-Ju) gives him the side-eye when this “friend” lays out Marco’s immediate future.

“You’ll find out for yourself when it’s time for you to die.”

Our hitman loves his designer duds and dotes on him Merc. He drinks Cokes through a straw. But rest assured, he tells one and all whom he deigns to identify himself to instead of just stabbing, throat-slicing or shooting.

“I’m a professional!” (in Korean with English subtitles). He most certainly is. He’s also damned entertaining. And what did Hitchcock always say? “Good villains make good thrillers.”

Marco is a loser at life, probably since birth. He is a “mutt,” one and all say, a Kopino — half Korean, half Filipino. Marco’s mom needs life-saving surgery. He gambles his boxing winnings in Manila (I think that’s the location, even though those scenes were shot in Thailand) and pays others to hunt for his Korean father in the vain hope of getting the cash for the medical bills.

He’s even desperate enough to agree to pitch in on a jewelry store heist, which turns out to be a gang set-up for 11 guys who must have lost money on a fight Marco won and want to beat him to death.

Imagine his surprise when a Korean lawyer, complete with entourage, shows up saying that his father has been looking for him, too. They’ve brought along a hospice nurse. They promise to pay for Mom’s surgery. But he needs to get on a plane for Korea right now. Dad’s dying.

It’s on the plane that Marco first meets the “friend” whom he doesn’t realise has been stalking him. That friend doesn’t seem that friendly when he later ambushes Marco’s ride to his father’s side.

For a boxer, this kid is awfully prone to take the “flee” option when faced with “fight or flight” moments.Whatever’s going on, you can be sure there are mobsters, family factions and more than one “professional” on the lookout for Marco.

Go Ara plays a cold-blooded woman on his trail. Kang-woo Kim is the mob empire heir so determined to meet “my brother.”

As the bodies pile up and many a Genesis and Mercedes is trashed or perforated with pistol holes, we shout at the screen for Marco to “HIT somebody,” but not for our smirking cola-addict to get what he has coming to him. He’s just too damned fun.

Writer-director Park Hoon-jung keeps the action so brisk that we barely notice that the editing mixes up who is in which car and when that ride gets wrecked. He did “I Saw the Devil” and “V.I.P.” and delivers thrills on a modest scale and a modest budget. The same two stretches of Korean backroads through forests give him most of the chase coverage he needed (a bit of highway sneaks in there).

And you can guess where this is headed pretty early on. You could lop off the 18 minutes or so of explanations and other elements that constitute an anti-climax at the end and have a better film. But whatever.

Park keeps this A-to-B journey, with our hapless hero changing custody many times, on the move. Kang lets us feel the wince every time somebody calls Marco a “Kopino” or “mutt,” each slur cutting him to the quick. Marco’s unprofessionalism and cluelessness has him running right into peril time after time, refusing to use his reflexes and one known-skill to pop this or that goon or girl with a gun right in the mouth.

Every now and then though, he surprises us with a punch, just enough to keep his boxing card. It’s always unexpected, and always gets a sadistic laugh out of the viewer, if not the resident sadist in the script.

And Kim, dapper and profanely jokey — playing a guy who only truly gets angry when you ding his Mercedes or soil his pricey shoes — makes sadistic killers for hire fun again. He sets the tone right from the start as this unnamed “friend” overwhelms a garage full of thugs, promising their leader, Boss Cho, that this screwdriver in his hand is what he’s using to “carve your heart out” because a blunt instrument like that “is more painful.”

And he should know. He’s the “professional.”

Rating: unrated, violent as all get-out

Cast: Kim Seon-ho, Kang Tae-Ju, Go Ara, Kang-woo Kim

Credits: Scripted and directed by Park Hoon-jung A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:57