Shiri (2002)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

i must have seen a different film!!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Yunjin Kim (Sun from TV's Lost) stars as tropical fish seller Myung-hyun Lee, who, unbeknownst to her counter-terrorist fiancé Jong Won Yu (Suk-kyu Han), is actually undercover assassin Hee, member of a special forces group that has hijacked some high-tech explosives as part of a desperate plot to re-unify North and South Korea.The quote on the front of my DVD claims that Shiri is 'a mix of Nikita and Die Hard', which, to be blunt, is a crock of s**t. Apart from one of the main characters being a female killer and an awful lot of gunfire, this Korean flick bears very little resemblance to and is nowhere near as good as either of the aforementioned films. What we actually get with Shiri is a fairly mundane bad guys versus good guys thriller in which lots of people get killed (although who is shooting at who and why is often hard to keep track of), with an overload of shaky camera-work and some nonsense about tropical fish thrown in for those icthyophile action fans in the audience.Funniest part: when a cornered female terrorist kills herself by swallowing a small explosive that blows her head apart. Most ridiculous moment: an agent discovering a bugging device hidden inside one of the tropical fish in his office (not only are we expected to believe that successfully performing such an operation on a fish would be feasible, but we are also supposed to accept that such a device would pick up sound from inside the creature submersed in a full tank of water).

Security agent Ryu stumbles upon a plot by North Korean fanatics (led by terrorist Park and assassin Hee) to disrupt peace and re-unification efforts by North and South politicians using high tech explosives and the hunt is on to stop them. Much gun play follows, as well as much talk about the politics and sociology of possible Korean re-unification. Given North Korea's history of selling weaponry to anyone with hard currency and South Korea's position as an important diplomatic and military ally of the U.S., such discussions are actually of worldwide interest. Since emerging in the mid-90s as a distinct cinematic power, South Korea has become filmdom's leading edge for cult actioners and this movie shows why. It is fast paced, uberviolent, with a polished look, tightly crafted plot line and strong performances by its ensemble cast.

This movie is more than an action flick, it highlights the relationship between North and South Korea. If you know anything about their pasts and their present than you can see why this is a movie by Koreans for Koreans. The actions scenes did not impress me, I saw this movie in 2006...after watching such movies as MI3, but it wasn't too shabby for a non-Hollywood pre-new millenia movie.Okay so about the movie itself...I don't like the opening, too dramatic and over the top, I was never a fan of Roman decimation and I will never be a fan of this kind of training method. However, once it gets to the actual story then the clues and hints are laid out and you see how everything comes together in the end. You can probably guess the entire ending after some time. The romance is small, about what you expect for an action film. The chemistry is okay. It is really more of a thriller than anything because you're usually puzzled as to how the hero is going to catch the bad guys since he keeps on failing initially.The actors did a fairly good job. The action sequences are okay, they're shaky at times, I don't like how the South Korean SWAT teams can't hit anything despite perfectly planned traps and outnumbering the bad guys 50:1. Maybe they should get plastic surgery to open their eyes? It was a so-so movie, but because of theme and background I'll put it above the the average, it could be used to do more than simply entertain. It is simply outdated now if you want a really good action film.

In the year 1999 the film that dominated most East Asian film markets was James Cameron's Titanic which would go on to be the highest grossing film of all time. However, in South Korea the film that was number one at the box office was Shiri, an action-packed film that would go on to set South Korean box office records and force the Hollywood juggernaut to take notice that films produced in other countries could compete with the likes of Titanic. In the end 1/7 of South Korea's entire population would go to the theater to watch Shiri and it also received accolades in other Asian countries and helped revitalize the South Korean film industry whose government imposed that South Korean films had to be shown at least 106 days a year so that it could compete with foreign films and it also put on the road to stardom Choi Min-sik and Han Suk-kyu.Shiri opens with scene after scene of the brutal training endured by those who wish to become members of the 8th Division, an elite force of North Korean Commandos. Amongst these individuals is a young woman named Lee Bang-hee who not only surpasses her male counterparts in fighting skills, but who is unmatched in her marksmanship. With her weapon of choice she perfectly severs the spinal cord with one shot and obliterates the heart with the next. Surviving her training, Bang-hee is sent to South Korea and assassinates several important political figures until suddenly disappearing. However, one day she returns and seems to be up to her old tricks again. Two special agents are assigned to her case, Yu Jongwon and Lee Janggil; however, she continues to foil them time after time. While searching for Bang-hee who has recently assassinated an arms dealer and a scientist who were working together under the table, Yu and Lee soon learn that the 8th division led by their old nemesis Park Mu-young is plotting to steal a new weapon called CMX which is ten times stronger than an average bomb, liquid, and virtually undetectable and are unable to stop Park when he successfully does steal the CMX. Park calls the agency and informs them that ten sites in Seoul are set to be destroyed by the 8th Division. If this scenario wasn't bad enough, it is taking place right at the same time the leaders of both South and North Korea are planning to attend a soccer match in which the North and the South play each other.Combining action, romance, and melodrama Shiri is quite an engaging film that can be appreciated on many different levels. Due to its success a number of clones were produced that did not quite live up to the original, but they helped revamp the slumping South Korean film industry to show the world that blockbusters do not only originate in Hollywood.