Shiri (film)

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Shiri

Korean Shiri poster
Directed by Kang Je-gyu
Produced by Moo-Rim Byun
Kwan-hak Lee
Written by Kang Je-gyu
Starring Han Suk-kyu
Choi Min-sik
Kim Yoon-jin
Song Kang-ho
Music by Dong-jun Lee
Cinematography Sung-Bok Kim
Editing by Gok-ji Park
Release date(s) February 13, 1999 (South Korea)
Running time 125 min.
Language Korean
Budget $8,500,000 US (est.)
IMDb profile
Korean name
Hangul: 쉬리
Hanja:
Revised Romanization: Swiri
McCune-Reischauer: {{{mr}}}

Shiri (쉬리, Swiri) is a 1999 Korean film written and directed by Kang Je-gyu.

Shiri was the first Hollywood-style big-budget action film to be produced in the "new" Korean film industry (i.e. after Korea's major economic boom in the Nineties).[citation needed] Created as a deliberate homage to the "high-octane" action cinema made popular by Hollywood through the Eighties, it also contains a story that draws on strong Korean national sentiment to fuel its drama.[citation needed] Much of the film's visual style shares that of the Asian action cinema of John Woo, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and the relentless pace of the second unit directors, like Vic Armstrong and Guy Hamilton, in the James Bond films.[citation needed]

The movie was released under the name Shiri outside of South Korea; inside Korea, the title was spelled Swiri. The name refers to a fish found in Korean fresh-water streams. At one point Park has a monologue wherein he describes how the waters from both North and South Korea flow freely together, and how the fish can be found in either water without knowing which it belongs to. This ties into the film's ambitions to be the first major-release film to directly address the still-thorny issue of Korean reunification.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An elite group of North Korean soldiers are put through a brutal training regime. Under the auspices of their commander, Park Mu-young (Choi Min-sik), they will be sent into South Korea as sleeper agents, to be reactivated at some later date. The most promising of the group is Lee Bang-hee, a female sniper who systematically kills several key South Korean government figures over the next few years.

Meanwhile, South Korea is searching for Bang-hee. The agent in charge of her case, Yu Jong-won (Han Suk-kyu) has nightmares about her murdering both him and his partner, Lee Jang-gil (Song Kang-ho). Yu is also currently engaged to a young woman, Myung-hyun (Kim Yoon-jin), a former alcoholic and the owner of a fish and aquarium supply store. They are happy together, but Yu is worried that he cannot tell Myung-hyun about the real nature of his job due to his security clearance.

Yu and Lee are contacted by an arms dealer who claims to have information about their quarry, but he is shot dead by Bang-hee before he can give them any information. After digging a bit deeper, they determine that he had been contacted by the assassin at some point, in the effort to acquire something. That something turns out to be CTX, a binary liquid explosive developed by the South Korean government. In its ground state, CTX is indistinguishable from water, but when placed under the right temperature conditions for long enough, a single liter of it can explode with enough force to level a fifteen-story building. The agents begin to suspect its intended use by the assassins, when Kim, a scientist working at a lab connected to CTX, is assassinated by Bang-hee.

Park and his agents ambush a military convoy with several liters of CTX, killing all the soldiers and making off with the dangerous liquid before the agents could arrive in time to warn them. Later, Park calls Yu and issues an ultimatum: he has concealed several CTX bombs around Seoul, and will give him just enough time to find each one before setting them off. It is revealed that Park and Yu have a history: Park once hijacked an airplane and killed many civilians, but managed to escape by disguising himself as one of the (injured) flight crew.

The first of the CTX bombs is found on top of a department store, but Park lied about the time factor. The bomb explodes just as the bomb disposal team discover its exact location, resulting in dozens of deaths. Yu is devastated, as is Myung-hyun, who has begun drinking again.

Yu realizes that there may be a security leak, and suspects Lee - who, ironically enough, suspects the same thing and bugged Yu's car and phone to see if he could learn anything. They set a trap - into which Park and Bang-hee step - but the situation quickly escalates into a firefight resulting in police and civilian casualties. Several of the agents are killed. Others, including Park, escape. Myung-hyun/Bang-hee sustains an injury, which she tries to hide from Yu. Yu sees her dressing her wounds without her knowledge, and struggles to take in the true identity of his girlfriend.

Myung-hyun's identity is confirmed later when electronic surveillance devices are discovered in fish decorating Yu's office. Yu himself had suggested bringing in the fish, and his girlfriend had supplied them. Lee confronts her in her shop, and is shot by Park. Yu suddenly appears with officers, who engage in a firefight with Park and his agents. Park and Myung-hyun escape, while a dying Lee hands a soccer match ticket to Yu.

The terrorists aim to detonate a CTX bomb directly over the Royal Box at a soccer stadium in the midst of a friendly match played by a North and South Korean team. The agents were misled into believing the next CTX target was at the airport, while Yu realizes the ticket held by his dead partner means the bomb is actually at the stadium. He defies orders and rushes to the stadium, where Park, Myung-hyun, and other terrorists mingle with the crowd. They find a total ban on all liquids, but enter easily as the CTX and weapons were already planted in the stadium beforehand.

Myung-hyun retrieves a hidden rifle from a restroom cubicle, while Park and his agents tail several patrolling South Korean SWAT officers who later adjourn to the restrooms. There, the policemen are killed and their bodies quickly dragged away. Myung-hyun advances into the grandstand with her rifle, while Park and three other men, now disguised as South Korean SWAT officers, enter the stadium control room, killing everyone there and forcing the remaining staff to switch on the stadium lights to trigger the CTX. Yu arrives at the stadium, and is tipped off about the lights. A violent confrontation in the control room results in the death of all four terrorists, and the lights are switched off in the nick of time. Myung-hyun notices this, and fires at the VIPs, but misses her target. Chasing after the entourage, she kills several more SWAT officers along the way before being confronted by a large group of officers led by Yu. As she makes a last ditch attempt to complete her mission, she is shot dead by Yu.

Yu later learns that Myung-hyun was pregnant with his child, and had left detailed instructions on how to catch her on his answering machine before leaving for the stadium.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast and roles

[edit] Box office

The total budget of the film was $8.5 million, at the time the single biggest budget yet allocated to a Korean movie. Part of the funding was covered by Korean electronics giant Samsung. The film was a criticial and financial success in Korea and broke box office record. 6.5 million people saw Shiri in South Korean cinemas in, beating the previous record set by Titanic of 4.3 million.[1]. It was also successful throughout the rest of Asia, and has since been issued on video worldwide. It has also played theatrically in limited engagements in the west.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The UNESCO Courier

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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