Check the poster for this one. Koreawood has learned a lot from Hollywood. You will never see the shot from this poster in the movie. Not even close. Sadly. If only . . . . What do you think they're selling here? Good looking automatic pistols? Yeah, right. Seriously, though, Kim Yun-jin is a good looking
woman. Hey! Two of my favorites in action, Song Kang-ho and Choi Min-sik, on opposing sides in the race to assassinate the heads of North and South Korea. Will this help to speed up reunification? Remains to be seen. This movie topped the all-time gross in Korea for Titanic and rocketed the Korean film industry onto the international stage, all for only about a 5 million dollar production cost. Pretty amazing. James Cameron, eat your heart out. As far as Korean films go, this is not bad as an action thriller, although I have to say that the plot is less than crispy. The opening training scenes of the North Korean soldiers, well, who knows. After everything I've heard about the RoK soldiers during the Vietnam War, I'm willing to believe their counterparts up north are pretty tough as well, and I can't say I needed to see them go through training to demonstrate that they have learned how to kick borat. This movie also doesn't seem to know how to end. C'est la vie. I like the fish motif here. The shiri/swiri, from what I understand, is an indigenous Korean fish, apparently quite ancient, that swims the clearest waters, perhaps subterranean, which run throughout the country, regardless of artificially imposed borders. It's not the strongest metaphor, but it's decent. I will say that I hope they used animatronic fish for the scenes where the tanks get blown out. I hope.
October 24, 2007
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