Shiri-
This movie was a huge blockbuster hit at the Korean cinema.
It was so huge that ticket sales even eclipsed the big Hollywood
hit at the time, Titanic. The movie starts out in North
Korea where an elite group of assasins is being trained
on how to be killing machines. At the forefront is an exceptionally
vicious and precise woman, Hee. “To the reunification!”
they all shout. But, it’s not reunification they want,
they want another war.
Fast Forward a few years and Hee, the infamous female assassin,
has killed several key players in Seoul. There’s a
new liquid bomb on the market called CTX which looks like
water and detonates with heat and light. The latest shipment
was just hijacked, and secret agents suspect Hee and her
group. Two of South Korea’s best secret agents are
enlisted to foil the plot of the North Korean insurgents.
One of the secret agents, played by mega-star Han Seo-Kyu,
is in love with an ex-alcoholic woman who owns a goldfish
store. They have a loving relationship built on trust and
mutual respect. They are about to be married. She holds
him in the rain and tenderly proclaims “You’re
the only one who really understands me.” She's unaware
of the danger he’s in, and he wants to protect her
from it. The bad guys want to blow up Seoul to jump-start
a revolution, but things take an unexpected twist.
This movie is fairly violent and has a lot of shooting and
action sequences. However the special effects and camera
work that makes these scenes interesting are not that remarkable.
The real reason this movie did so well at the box office
was because of the theme of reunification. Since there was
so much national pride and Korea fever in the years leading
up to the FIFA World Cup in 2002, the movie hit audiences
just at the time when audiences could identify with the
theme. In the movie, Korea is compared to Hydra, the Greek
mythological figure with one body and several heads. The
analogy must have seemed very profound to Koreans living
in a divided continent. Personally I didn't think this movie
was anything special.
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