Shiri

At first I thought this was another martial arts film, though unusually bloody, and making even less sense than usual. After a while the good guys mostly sorted themselves out from the bad guys, and we began to enjoy a surprisingly good thriller.

Two south Korean special agents are chasing a North Korean assassin who's training we see at the start of the film. However, things get more complicated than that, not least due to one of the agents being involved in a love affair. There is a hunt for a mysterious explosive agent, and a plot to disrupt the thawing of relations. Oh, and lets not forget that the two agents believe there is a leak in their agency.

The explosive agent is a curious choice. It looks like water, yet when exposed to heat and light it forms a red sphere within it, and shortly after it blows up with a violence approaching nuclear weapons. We learn this from a lab tech who demonstrates the formation of the red sphere, and we learn that 200 cc of liquid would destroy everything in a radius of a kilometre. He is surprising casual about this happening, and notes that they were never quite sure exactly how long it would take. This leads to the damn red timers that Ebert hates so much, and I'm with him here. The timers do not set off the explosive, and have no purpose but to manipulate the audience.

Anyone who likes gun battles is going to love this. There is no end of people shooting at one another. In fact, the Making of Shiri shows how much training the actors went through. Not just paint-ball stalk and shoot, but skeet shooting, and pistol range training. It's a little confusing in that many of the people shooting at one another are wearing the same uniforms, but what does reality have to do with it?

I found this DVD at Rogers while I was looking for something foreign, and was intrigued because I'd never seen a Korean film. In some ways, films reveal something about the national character of the people that make them. They have their own conventions, and for someone that is sick and tired of Hollywood it's a refreshing change to not know exactly how the film is going to end. I won't spoil it for you here, but the ending is right.

If you're in the mood for a psychological and action thriller, and don't mind good subtitles, give this one a try.