Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Let's be realistic.

Absolutely brilliant

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Although the South Korean Action thriller Shiri was released over a decade ago, the film has lost none of its poignancy, influence, or adrenaline charged suspense. Despite been hailed as the movie that defeated Titanic at the South Korean box office, occasionally this fact appears difficult to fathom, in that Titanic is a film that continuously makes coherent sense, while Shiri suffers from a number of anomalies and issues within its plot. During one scene, a convoy makes its way out from a tunnel. A couple of shots later, the tunnel has strangely disappeared, and I personally have my doubts that such a phenomenon frequently occurs in reality. During another scene, a recording device miraculously makes its way from one location to another, without so much as an explanation. These are two of several instances that don't entirely make sense, though if you put these small addendum's aside, Shiri is a feature that, although it isn't excellent, proves to be two hours of good entertainment.What this feature does best is amplify the tension, the final confrontation been so nail-bitingly suspenseful, you will quite literally hold your breath. The violence is continuously prominent, with a considerable amount of blood spurting out from bodily wounds, the level of causalities often appearing rather astronomical. Action scenes often involve massive shoot-outs, rather than physical confrontations, although when these occur they are very American in nature, and contain no stylized fighting. The camera work during these instances is very frenetic, and it can occasionally be difficult to ascertain what the audience is supposed to be focused upon. On more than one occasion, a small enemy insertion team is capable of defeating a wealth of South Korean soldiers who simply drop like flies, though I suspect real combatants would have greater capability than those displayed here, who seem humiliatingly incompetent in order for the story to continue.The film begins with a secret North Korean assassination unit, who are been ruthlessly trained to weed out the weak and find only the most proficiently capable. The most well respected of them all is Lee Bang-hee, an outstanding sniper, who is later responsible for the deaths of many high ranking politicians and intellectuals after covertly entering South Korea.Jong-won Yu (Suk-kyu Han) the agent in charge of the investigation into Bang-hee, alongside his partner, Jang-gil Lee (Kang-ho Song), both of whom work for South Korea's intelligence service, find themselves closing in on her. But the situation begins to outrageously take a turn for the worse, when North Korea's 8th Special Forces steals a mountainous load of CTX, a liquid chemical explosive, the combined amount having the capacity to wipe Seoul off the face of the planet.Continuously one step ahead of those vying to apprehend them, Yu begins to suspect that a mole is buried inside the intelligence service, however when the only other two people who know of the investigation are his partner and his boss, the list of suspects is slim. As trust begins to waver between the partnership and the situation intensifies, a series of questions begin to push the plot forward: How are the North Korean Special Forces involved with Bang-hee? Are the North Koreans, who are petitioning for peace, aware of what is happening? And will the intelligence service work everything out in time? But, with every step that agent Yu takes towards his goal of apprehending his target, the more he distances himself from his fiancé, Myung-hyun Lee (Yunjin Kim), a beautiful young woman with an avid fascination for fish.Fish themselves have a crucial element to play in the film, metaphorically articulating the differences between the South and the North, whilst also representing love, the Kissing Gourami, a species that cannot live without their paramour, that kiss their partner as often as they fight, reflecting the relationship that Myung-hyun and Yu have. The romance is efficaciously incorporated into the plot, which seamlessly moves from an action scene, to a melodramatic one, though additional information would have been beneficial in further establishing much of their history.Frequently entertaining, and beneficially aided by the accompanying score (which has a slight similarity to Armageddon), Shiri does occasionally suffer from predictability, and those familiar to films of this genre may determine the directionality of the plot before it officially unfolds. The film's conclusion seems to have been deliberately exaggerated for increased emotional affect, though a number of alternate possibilities could have ended the feature in an equally entertaining fashion.Despite a few aforementioned issues, Shiri is a sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but frequently action packed thriller, that deserves to be viewed.

You want realistic military training? How about the first one to assemble their gun gets to shoot the competitor in the head? How about target practice with real soldiers interspersed between?How about a film that out grossed Titanic in Korea?How about a really hot secret agent (Yunjin Kim)?Lots of action and exploding buildings. Not really up on the politics, so I am sure I missed something. As some have said, the film is a metaphor for those who want to see a united Korea. The two lovers represent that effort.At the end, it is a rush to find the assassin at a futbol game between the two countries.

This Korean spy thriller centers on an assassin from North Korea (Kim Yoon-jin from Lost) and a team of special forces (the leader is Choi Min-sik from Oldboy) that hijacks an shipment of a new type of explosive. Two members of the South Korean counter-terrorism unit (one of whom is played by Song Kang-ho, who has been in JSA, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Lady Vengeance, and The Host) must track them down before they blow up Seoul. There is a good mix of drama and action here. One of the South Korean agents is engaged, but she doesn't know what he does for a living. The other is obsessed with finding Hee, the assassin. There are some nice running gun fights with hand-held camera work that emphasized the chaos. I really would have liked to see at least one decent car chase, though. Well acted all around and the direction by Kang Je-gyu (Tae Guk Gi), who also wrote the script, was very solid. There is one very sudden twist at the end that really makes you take notice and that really makes the film more than your standard actioner.

I'd heard a lot about "Shiri" (aka "Swiri") and how this Korean action film compared favourably (or perhaps even exceeded) recent US action films. So it was with high hopes I sat down to watch this movie.Perhaps it was a result of the hype, but I came away feeling very disappointed in this film. There are some very strong scenes in this film, don't get me wrong - the training sequence at the start, the suddenness of the assassinations, for example - which help add something different to this movie, and the technical aspects of "Shiri" are definitely better than average, but in many ways this film falls short.The big issue for me was the disconnect between the 'realistic' political aspect that provided the motivation for the movie and the over-the-top gun play in the action sequences. At the very start, the training sequence makes the movie look like it will have a more realistic portrayal of violence, but this dissipates in a hail of bullets during the shoot-outs. Apparently the South Korean Special Forces suck, because they put thousands of rounds from MP5s in the direction of their heavily outnumbered North Korean adversaries and continually miss, while the North Koreans just need hand guns (Berettas, possibly) and one shot to gun down large numbers of armoured opponents.I don't mind cartoon-ish violence in live action films, but it has to be kept consistent. The ability of the North Koreans to avoid large numbers of South Korean bullets exceeded my suspension of disbelief and undermined my acceptance of the political motivation. I can handle the plot holes and the bad science, but just can't reconcile the supposed realistic political themes with the absurd action sequences.As for the love story aspect - well, it was something a bit different for this genre of movie (especially the phone message at the very end of the film - that would have been heartbreaking for the characters involved), but not enough to make this film any more than a curiosity for those who want to see what Korean action films are capable of.