YNOT at the Movies

Staying up late, I watched the bloody action Korean flick "Shiri" ("쉬리") by director Kang Je-gyu (姜帝圭), who made "Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War" (太極旗 휘날리며).

In "Shiri," Ryu and Lee are partners as South Korean special agents. They are hunting down the North Korea's 8th Special Forces who gets a hold of the powerful newly developed weapon called CTX, which can blew up the entire Seoul.

If there were no subtitle and if the film were cast with big American stars, this movie might have been just like a typical blockbuster Hollywood action flick. There are a lot shooting, killing, car chasing, and of course, explosions.

However, besides it's a Korean production, there is little something else that makes this film different from a typical Hollywood production: an intriguing plot.

I am not trying to outsmart director Kang Je-gyu, but at the very beginning of the film, I predicted the biggest secret of this film, which of course I am not gonna say what it is here. How? Perhaps because without strong characters, a simple plot hardly interests me any more. With a high expectation, I was hoping to have some twists in the film, and I got it just as I imagined. Not too bad at all as action is really the focal point of this film.

I definitely enjoy seeing how these characters react to the life and death situations involving their relationships, much more than how gloriously a building is blown up.

I think it's probably a human instinct to enjoy seeing something gets blew up. Don't we light up fireworks in just about every corner in this world on New Year's Eve? Isn't a big news on TV whenever an big structure is demolished? Everybody gets so excited seeing those. I can't explain.

Let's just hope that Hollywood won't remake this film someday. There are enough stuff blew up already in this movie.

My rating: 7 out of 10.