Shiri (film)
Encyclopedia
Shiri is a 1999
1999 in film
The year 1999 in film involved several noteworthy events and has been called "The Year That Changed Movies". Several significant feature films, including Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut, Pedro Almodóvar's first Oscar-winning film All About My Mother, science fiction The Matrix, Deep...

 South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

n action film
Action film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...

, written and directed by Kang Je-gyu
Kang Je-gyu
Kang Je-gyu is a South Korean film director. He studied in Chungang University.He firstly got his prize in Korea Youth Film festival and Korea Scenario Awards in 1991.-Career:...

.

Swiri was the first Hollywood-style big-budget blockbuster
Blockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...

 to be produced in the "new" Korean film industry (i.e. after Korea's major economic boom in late 1990s). Created as a deliberate homage to the "high-octane" action film made popular by Hollywood through 1980s, it also contained a story that draws on strong Korean national sentiment to fuel its drama. Much of the film's visual style shares that of the Asian
Culture of Asia
The culture of Asia is human civilization in Asia. It features different kinds of cultural heritage of many nationalities, societies, and ethnic groups in the region, traditionally called a continent from a Western-centric perspective, of Asia...

 action cinema, and particularly Hong Kong action cinema, of John Woo
John Woo
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS is a Hong Kong-based film director and producer. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard...

, Tsui Hark
Tsui Hark
Tsui Hark , born Tsui Man-kong, is a Hong Kong New Wave film director and producer. He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema .-Early life:...

, Ringo Lam
Ringo Lam
Ringo Lam Ling-Tung , born in 1955 is a Hong Kong film director, producer and scriptwriter.He is known for gritty, dark and realistic action thrillers. He was born in Hong Kong and studied film at York University film school in Toronto...

, and the relentless pace of the second unit directors, like Vic Armstrong
Vic Armstrong
Victor Monroe Armstrong is a BAFTA winning British film director and stunt double -- the world's most prolific according to the Guinness Book of Records...

 and Guy Hamilton
Guy Hamilton
Guy Hamilton is an English film director.Hamilton was born in Paris, France where his English parents were living. Remaining in France during the Nazi occupation, he was active in the French Resistance...

, in the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 films.

The movie was released under the name Shiri outside of South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

; inside Korea, the title was spelled Swiri. The name refers to Coreoleuciscus splendidus
Coreoleuciscus splendidus
Coreoleuciscus splendidus of the monotypic genus Coreoleuciscus, also known as the Swiri or Korean Splendid Dace, is a species of fish from the cyprinid family endemic to rivers of the Korean peninsula...

, 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
Korean reunification
Korean reunification refers to the hypothetical future reunification of North Korea and South Korea under a single government...

.

The film would later serve as the basis for the successful drama series Iris
Iris (TV series)
Iris is a South Korean espionage television drama series broadcast by KBS in 2009. With a budget in excess of 20 billion won , it, along with its spin-off Athena: Goddess of War, share the record for the most expensive Korean dramas ever produced.Premiering in October 2009, the series was a...

, starring Lee Byung-hun
Lee Byung-Hun
Lee Byung-hun is a South Korean actor, singer and model. He has starred in popular television dramas such as Iris , All In and Beautiful Days...

 and Kim Tae-hee.

Plot

An elite group of North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

n soldiers are put through a brutal training regime. Under the auspices of their commander, Park Mu-young (Choi Min-sik
Choi Min-sik
Choi Min-sik is a South Korean actor. He is best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Oldboy and I Saw the Devil.-Movie career:...

), they will be sent into South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

 as sleeper agent
Sleeper agent
A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but rather to act as a potential asset if activated...

s, to be reactivated at some later date. The most promising of the group is Lee Bang-hee, a female sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....

 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
Han Suk-kyu
Han Suk-kyu is a South Korean actor.-Biography:Han is known as a family man, avid golfer, fisherman and voracious reader. He collects animation by Studio Ghibli and hopes to join Ghibli voice cast one day as a Korean-speaking character. While a student at the Film and Theater department of...

) has nightmares about her murdering both him and his partner, Lee Jang-gil (Song Kang-ho
Song Kang-ho
Song Kang-ho is a leading South Korean film actor.- Career:Song Kang-ho never professionally trained as an actor, beginning his career in social theater groups after graduating from Kimhae High School...

). Yu is also engaged to a young woman, Yi Myung-hyun (Kim Yoon-jin
Kim Yoon-jin
Yunjin Kim is a Korean American film and theater actress. Although she is best known in the English-speaking world for her role as Sun on the American television series Lost, Kim has also appeared in numerous film and TV projects in South Korea.- Early life :Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea...

), 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
Binary liquid
Binary liquid is a type of chemical combination, which creates a special reaction or feature as a result of two liquid chemicals, normally inert or having no function by themselves, being mixed. A number of chemical products are produced as a result of mixing two chemicals as a binary liquid, such...

 explosive developed by the South Korean government. In its ground state
Ground state
The ground state of a quantum mechanical system is its lowest-energy state; the energy of the ground state is known as the zero-point energy of the system. An excited state is any state with energy greater than the 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
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...

, 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
Aircraft hijacking
Aircraft hijacking is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. In most cases, the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers. Occasionally, however, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves, such as the September 11 attacks of 2001...

 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 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 football 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, Bang-hee, 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.

Bang-hee retrieves a hidden Steyr AUG
Steyr AUG
The AUG is an Austrian bullpup 5.56mm assault rifle, designed in the early 1970s by Steyr Mannlicher GmbH & Co KG . The AUG was adopted by the Austrian Army as the StG 77 in 1977, where it replaced the 7.62mm StG 58 automatic rifle...

 from a restroom cubicle, while Park and his agents tail several patrolling South Korean SWAT
SWAT
A SWAT team is an elite tactical unit in various national law enforcement departments. They are trained to perform high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular officers...

 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 in uniforms stolen from the dead policemen, 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 Bang-hee was pregnant with his child, and had left detailed instructions on how to catch her on his answering machine before leaving for the stadium. Yu then visits the real Myung-hyun, who is at a hospital for chemo therapy, and Myung-hyun explains to Yu how Bang-hee became a sister figure to Myung-hyun and how she loved to hear a particular song. Myung-hyun lets Yu listen to that song, and while listening to it Yu is captivated by the lyrics. The scene then fades, while Yu, still listening to the song, shuts his eyes.

Cast

  • Han Suk-kyu
    Han Suk-kyu
    Han Suk-kyu is a South Korean actor.-Biography:Han is known as a family man, avid golfer, fisherman and voracious reader. He collects animation by Studio Ghibli and hopes to join Ghibli voice cast one day as a Korean-speaking character. While a student at the Film and Theater department of...

     as Yu JongWon, a South Korean secret agent
  • Choi Min-sik
    Choi Min-sik
    Choi Min-sik is a South Korean actor. He is best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Oldboy and I Saw the Devil.-Movie career:...

     as Park Mu-young, a North Korean, a leader for the terrorists
  • Yunjin Kim as Lee Myung-hyun / Lee Bang-hee, a North Korean spy
  • Song Kang-ho
    Song Kang-ho
    Song Kang-ho is a leading South Korean film actor.- Career:Song Kang-ho never professionally trained as an actor, beginning his career in social theater groups after graduating from Kimhae High School...

     as Lee Jang-gil, also a South Korean secret agent and Yu JongWon's partner
  • Yoon Joo-sang
    Yoon Joo-sang
    Yoon Joo-sang is a veteran South Korean actor. He has appeared in the television series Iris.-References:...

     as Chief agent
  • Park Yong-Woo as Sik, a secret agent
  • Johnny Kim as Jung Dae-Ho (credited as Derek Kim)
  • Lee Seung-Shin as a physician
  • Kim Soo-Ro as a North Korean terrorist
  • Jang Hyeon-seong
  • Hwang Jung-min

Box office

The total budget of the film was $8.5 million, at the time the single biggest budget allocated to a Korean movie. Part of the funding was covered by the Korean electronics giant Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...

. The film was a critical and financial success in Korea and broke box office records. Shiri was seen in South Korean cinemas by 6.5 million people, beating the previous record set by Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...

of 4.3 million.

It was also successful throughout the rest of Asia (it was a top-grossing film when released in Hong Kong), and has since been issued on video worldwide. It has also played theatrically in limited engagements in the West.

See also


External links

(archived)
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK