1999, South Korea. Starring Suk-kyu Han, Min-sik Choi, Yoon-jin Kim, Kang-ho Song, Derek Kim. Directed by Je-kyu Kang. Buy it on Amazon.

It's been damn hard to like action films for the past five or six years. Back in the 1970s, America and Italy were cranking out action films the likes of which had never been seen before and would never be seen again. These were incredible films full of grim characters and gritty violence. When the 1980s rolled around, America dropped out of the picture, trading in the streetwise toughness of the 1970s for overblown blockbusters that were big on noise and and little on any real action or intensity. That trend continues to this day with a few notable exceptions.

But that was okay. While America force-fed itself a steady diet of Rambo and Steven Segal, dedicated action fans needed only to turn to Hong Kong, where the whole concept of action films was being reinvented by guys like Tsui Hark, John Woo, Sammo Hung, and plenty of others. What America had lost -- that human quality, the thrill that comes from seeing people instead of special effects at the forefront of the action -- Hong Kong now offered up in spades. And much like Italian and American films of the decade before, Hong Kong films during the 1980s were unique and will probably never be matched again.

Enter the 1990s. For various reasons, the Hong Kong film industry started to collapse. As older stars found themselves unable to perform the wild stunts the fans demanded of them and newer stars refused to undergo the horrific training required to pull off the stunts of yesteryear, action films faltered. Like American films, they began to focus less on the human aspect of a stunt and more on the technical aspect, things like big explosions and jumpy editing. Where many of the films had once relied on the style of breakneck martial arts action pioneered by Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Jackie Chan, the new crop of stars didn't have the dedication or the backgrounds to pull it off. A lot of the older stars, like Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, suffered pretty harsh injuries as well, meaning that by the middle of the 1990s it was getting pretty hard to find a martial arts action film that didn't relying heavily on wires, camera tricks, and undercranking. Rather than covering up for the weaknesses of the stars, with few exceptions it only reminded people of how lame the new bunch was turning out.

Interest in Hong Kong action films waned, and action fans soon found themselves lost once again. Sure, over in Japan Takeshi Kitano was revolutionizing the genre and doing things unlike anyone had done before him (or, of course, would ever do again), but one man could hardly support the genre for the entire world. It seemed that the well, for the most part, had run dry. Oh yeah, some people were swearing up and down that the latest crop of Bollywood actioners from India were real ass-kickers in the spirit of early John Woo action films. This claim never really held up to inspection, though. Perhaps it was simply time to go into hibernation, or spend time acquainting oneself with the impressive back catalog of worthy action films the world has to offer.

The along came Korea.

The Korean film industry has yet to get the attention that the cinema of China, Hong Kong, and Japan received overseas. An arthouse film would pop up every few years, but for the most part, even your above-average film fan in the United States knew little about Korean pop cinema. It just didn't have the trendy ring of other Asian countries. But a cursory look at where Korea stands right now will show that's in very much the same situation Italy, the United States, and Hong Kong were in when they were at the top of their game.

Both Italy and the US hit their action film stride in the early-mid 1970s. for the United States, it was a period when the Vietnam War was still raging, the country was trying to hold itself together, and everyone on either side of the fight just felt disillusioned and exhausted. In Italy, it was the Arab-Israeli war and the dramatic rise in terrorist activity and crime that tore the country to shreds. Out of these boiling cauldrons of chaos emerged some of the greatest, grittiest films of all time. Intense times breed intense films. In the 1980s, Hong Kong was really coming into its own as a force to be reckoned with, and at the same time realized that the 1997 hand-over date at which time they would rejoin the Communist mainland was no so far off as it once was. Mix that anxiety in with an explosion in the power of triad gangs, and all of a sudden you have an island full of nervous, uncertain people. That fear and uncertainty got channeled in many ways into energetic films and artistic expression. If nothing else, directors were betting they might not have has much freedom come 1997 so they better pull out all the stops before then. The results were, of course, amazing.

When 1997 rolled around and turned out to not be that big a deal, the industry found itself spent. Gangsters had bled it dry behind the scenes, VCD bootleggers had demolished the box office returns, and most of the old stars were retiring, seeking their fortunes elsewhere, or simply couldn't perform like they used to. Hong Kong settled back into a period of relative stability and complacency, and the raw intensity of the films from the 1980s was lost.

And now we have Korea. I'm going to assume that no one needs me to give them a lesson on the past and current state of Korea. The United States fought a little war over there we creatively call the Korean War. You can watch MASH for the low-down on that. The war was historic for many reasons, not the least of which being that America, still high off their big World War II win, was in for a rude awakening pertaining to our military might. The United States has never been successful with wars in Asia. The Japanese ran circles around us and just would not give up during World War II. The ground battles in the Pacific were some of the most intense and bloody American troops have ever fought -- my grandfather's ear will attest to that if you can find it. He left it back in Guadalcanal somewhere. Eventually, we just had to drop a couple atom bombs on Japan to get them to surrender.

Korea didn't go much better (and I won't even bring up Vietnam and Cambodia). When the country went into civil war, the United States immediately jumped to the aide of the democratic South. What we didn't count on was the Chinese leaping to the defense of the communist North. The war raged for years and never amounted to anything more than a stalemate. Eventually, everyone just got tired and signed a cease fire agreement. The war was never actually declared over. Officially, it's still going on today.

Like just about every communist country started finding out in the 1990's, there are some basic problems with a government that is totalitarian and isolationist. Communist North Korea simply started running out of money, then they were not so simply hit with a number of bombshells. Crop failure and severe flooding resulted in mass starvation. Just about every communist country in Asia began moving toward an open market economy. Where North Korea could previously rely on China and Russia for aide, that aide was gone as those countries found themselves with their own load of problems. Both leaders in the communist world began making overtures toward the formerly evil democracies of the West. Before North Korea knew it, Russia dropped Communism and China started to (but just couldn't let go of that whole torturing of political dissidents thing). Kampuchea changed its name back to Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Vietnam loosened the grip somewhat and started marketing itself as a great spot for vacations. Korea's communist allies were suddenly few and far between.

There was no way an impoverished, isolated country like North Korea could deal with the natural disasters that crippled its economy and crushed the people. They had to look for help, and the only places that were doing well were the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Maybe it was time to resume talks with their brothers and sisters from the South.

The notion of a reunification of the two countries has been kicked around a lot in recent years. It worked for Germany. But then, it's still a wildly complicated situation. Decades of separation require years and years of work before reunification can ever be a viable, lasting solution. The countries started down that road when North Korea simply stood up and said it needed help. Japan, South Korea, and the United States obliged. If the bitterest of enemies (there is no love loss between many Koreans and Japanese) could put aside differences to help people in need, then maybe healing the wounds wasn't such a crazy idea after all. Talks began, and just like in Italy, The United States, and Hong Kong, feelings of hope, fear, anxiety, and confusion emerged.

It's from these tense but hopeful times that Shiri draws its power. It draws its title from a fish that is native to the waters around the demilitarized zone between the two countries. The symbolism is not lost on the viewer, and in fact fish play a major role as symbols in this film.

Shiri opens with no holds barred, as a group of North Korean special operatives train under merciless conditions that include practicing your killing on (temporarily) live prisoners. The intro is alternately beautiful and grotesque. It holds nothing back when it comes to gore and bloodshed. In fact, as a whole Shiri is one of the goriest action films I've seen in quite a long time, right up there alongside War Dogs and the violent outbursts in a Takeshi Kitano film. At the same time, while people are being gored on bayonets and flayed alive, the entire thing is shot beautifully, set primarily at night in the rain with lighting and angles that remind me a lot of the rainy night fights from Tsui Hark's The Blade.

The star member of the team is a woman named Lee Bang-Hee. She kicks ass at everything, but shines as a marksman and sniper above all else. Choi Min-Sik stars as the leader of the group, a dedicated soldier named Park Mu-young. The grueling training sequence ends with the group seemingly hatching some sort of plot. Lee Bang-Hee then departs to carry out some mysterious task.

Skip ahead several years and a little further south, where we meet two star members of South Korea's special anti-terrorist police force, Ryu (Han Suk-Kyu) and Lee (Song Kang-Ho). The two of them have spent the bulk of the past couple years attempting to thwart the plots of the North Korean terrorists lead by Lee Bang-Hee and Park. Bang-Hee seems at least to have disappeared in the past year and stopped assassinating people. Well, that doesn't last long, as the story picks up as she comes out of retirement to play a major role in what is apparently going to be a major scheme. A film about an assassin who doesn't kill anyone wouldn't be very interesting.

Lee and Ryu realize that she's come out retirement when they attempt to meet with an arms dealer who wants to give them information about something she and her North Korean cohorts attempted to purchase from him. Unfortunately, he winds up dead before he can say much of anything. Lee and Ryu know now that Bang-Hee is back, she's trying to buy something serious, and that's about it. On top of all that, Ryu is struggling to build a life with his girlfriend Hee (Kim Yoon-Jin), a recovering alcoholic who runs a fish store. The fish symbol is played out again as she gives him a pair of kissing fish, explaining that if one dies, the other will die shortly thereafter of loneliness.

Ryu and Lee eventually figure out that the terrorists are going to try and steal a new type of liquid explosive that is far more powerful than plastique or any other sort of bomb. When they realize they are constantly being thwarted and outsmarted in ways that are impossible, it becomes evident that there's one more problem to deal with: someone in the office is a spy. Ryu and Lee suspect their own boss at first, and eventually turn their suspicions on each other. Meanwhile, Park leads the rest of the squadron over the border into South Korea and sets up the plot to steal the liquid explosive.

Despite all their careful planning, Ryu and the special forces are dealt a serious blow when the terrorists successfully hijack a convoy transporting the explosive. Ryu convinces himself that his partner and best friend Lee is indeed the spy, while Lee has come to the same conclusion about Ryu. Park begins threatening to blow up a variety of important spots throughout Seoul, promising that he will even tell the cops where the bombs are -- making sure to do so that no matter how fast they move, the cops won't be able to diffuse the bombs before they go off. The first explodes in a huge shopping mall -- a little strike against capitalism, there. Ryu knows that as long as someone is leaking information to Park's group, there's no chance the special ops unit will be able to capture them. He devises a plan that will trap, he hopes, both the rat and sniper Lee Bang-Hee.

It's necessary from here on out to be a bit vague about the particulars of the plot. I firmly believe that a great film cannot be ruined by knowing the end, and that you can't spoil something if it's effective, but I'll defer to common courtesy and keep a number of things secret. The trap almost works, but winds up leading to a huge shootout between the special forces and the terrorists. The action in Shiri is intense. Most of it is shot at a frantic pace with lots of movement, as if the camera was a member of the special ops team. And as we already said, the shootout are incredibly bloody. When people get ripped apart by automatic rifle fire at close range, they get ripped apart.

The best thing about the action isn't how much of it there is or how wild it is; it's how real most of it is. After years of watching John Woo and his many imitators send people sailing through the air in slow motion with two guns blazing while they cross their arms so they can, for some inexplicable reason, shoot left with their right hand and right with their left, it was good to see a film that handles most of its gunplay as if actual guns were being used. No sideways guns, no double-fisted guns. When they shoot, they hold the gun with one hand and steady it underneath with the other -- gee, the way guns are actually supposed to be fired so you can aim and shoot without shattering your wrist bones. Stylish, outlandish violence and gunplay is fine, but it's also nice to see a film that finally pays a little attention to detail and realism. In fact, among the many awards Shiri received in South Korea was one from the actual special forces unit. It was for realism in depicting the use of weapons and the way in which the team operates.

Ryu and Lee figure out that the bombings are little more than a red herring. The big target is a packed stadium during a soccer match. As part of the process of reunification, the leaders of North and South Korea decided to have their two teams play one another before uniting to play against teams from the rest of the world. It may seem like blowing up a soccer game isn't that great, but remember that the game is packed -- including the presidents of both countries -- and sports have actually played a major role in diplomacy in the past. I'm not a big organized sports fan, but only a fool would fail to see what an impact they've had on politics. The best example is the relations between China and The United States. Richard Nixon gets lots of credit for being the man who opened up dialogs with Communist China and began creating bridges between that country and the US, but the real pioneers were actually members of an American ping pong team.

Ping pong is serious business in China. If you've ever watched their Olympic ping pong team, you know this is an entirely different level of play then what you see in rec rooms across America. In 1971, the U.S. Table Tennis Team paid a diplomatic call to China for a friendly game of ping pong. The photo of a shabby, goofball looking hippy member of the American team surrounded by giggling Chinese kids is a famous picture. So famous and effective was the visit that the entire process of creating ties with China became known as "ping pong diplomacy."

A few years ago, a similar event happened when American Greco-Roman wrestlers traveled to Iran for a bout with the national team of our long-time enemy. Just as The US saw China's border dispute with the Soviet Union as a way to get in good with China, so too did we see Iran's constant battle with neighboring Iraq as a sort of "common enemy" way of establishing some sort of diplomacy with a country we'd hated previously. Once again, the first diplomats were athletes.

One of the most striking images from the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney came during the opening ceremonies when North and South Korea walked into the stadium under a unified flag and as a single team. They competed separately, but for that one night, there was no North or South; there was just Korea.

So sports can actually have a dramatic impact on things, and it's because they are something people have in common. A photo op of Mao and Nixon sipping mai-tai's is all fine and dandy for a history book, but how many everyday people relate to the staged posing of heads of state? How many relate to being enthralled by a good game? Sports speak to people on a common level that exists apart from ideology and politics. Sitting in the arena in 1971, there were no Communists and Capitalists. There were ping pong fans.

Ryu and Lee both know that if Park succeeds, it will be a crippling blow to the process of reunification, but the viewer may be confused by the fact that before every action, the terrorists say, "For the reunification." If they are in favor of reunification, why fight so hard against it? That's explained as part of one of the film's many strong points. The terrorists are not just terrorists. They are human characters. Their motivations, emotions, and beliefs are made very clear, and it becomes difficult to simply dismiss them as evil. They avoid the one-dimensionality that plagues most other bad guys in action films. Park in particular has a powerful moment when he confronts Ryu and talks about how SOuth Korean people have been lounging around in shopping malls and fancy stores while North Koreans have been left to starve and suffer and die. In his eyes, the biggest roadblock to reunification is the squabbling, petty, egomaniacal leaders of the political parties who leave people in misery while they sip cocktails and talk diplomacy in posh apartments.

It's hard not to sympathize with Park. He's a common type of character -- an everyman who sees people die in the name of political posturing. Choi Min-sik is superb in the role, as subtly powerful as Takeshi Kitano at his best or Chu Kong in The Killer as Sidney Fung and Kuo Chui as Mad Dog in Hard Boiled. While he's not the main character, he definitely emerges as the most interesting because he has so much depth. During one of their many bloody and intense shootouts with the police, there's a striking contrast between he and Ryu. While whole slews of cool looking anti-terrorist guys in their fancy uniforms get blown away, Ryu dashes past intent on catching Park. Conversely, when one of the terrorists is shot, Park's primary concern is for his team. He even puts himself in an inescapable situation because of his attempts to save his fallen comrade.

You may notice that I haven't said too much about assassin Bang-Hee despite her being central to everything that happens. Suffice it to say that when Ryu finally catches her, he's in for one hell of a revelation. You'll probably figure it out pretty easily, and to the film's credit that doesn't lessen the emotional impact. I firmly believe that I could detail every little plot point for you and it would still be a blast to watch.

After Ryu's trap backfires and Park is rescued from a nasty predicament by by Bang-Hee, Ryu manages to trail Bang-Hee as she retreats to her hideout to treat a wound. Ryu nearly loses it when he finds her hideout is his girlfriend's fish shop. At the same time, Lee finally figures out the mystery of the leak inside police headquarters. Months ago, Ryu's girlfriend Hee gave him a fish for his desk, and as a way to pretty up the place, the department bought several other fish from her. They had a problem with them dying, which they attributed to the fact that Lee thought they'd like to eat things like cookies and hamburgers. Lee has a revelation about this however, and when he cuts open a dead fish in his office aquarium he finds a tiny transmitter inside. He realizes then, just as Ryu realizes it as he watches Bang-Hee remove a wig and disguise: Hee and Bang-Hee are one and the same.

The year or so Bang-Hee was retired was spent in Japan receiving plastic surgery. Ryu is devastated to say the least. He has no idea what to do or how to feel. At the same time, Hee is tortured over the fact that she actually does love Ryu as much as she says, and her relationship with him goes far beyond a mere easy road into police headquarters. Lee is less indecisive, however, and immediately calls out the troops to capture her. It doesn't go as planned, of course.

In the end, it comes down to Ryu facing off against Park and his soldiers in the stadium while Hee waits as a back-up plan. If the bomb doesn't go off, she'll open fire on the two presidents. The final shootout is amazing, not that everything up to this point hasn't been equally amazing. It ends as we expect it will, with Ryu forced to confront Hee before she assassinates the presidents. The final scene between the two is silently powerful. They exchange no words, but the emotion conveyed is overpowering. And it only gets stronger in the following scene. When Hee refuses to relinquish her weapon and takes a potshot at the presidential limo as it passes, Ryu shoots her in the head.

The next scene sees Ryu returning to the fish shop. His mission was a success, but he's lost everything. On the answering machine he finds a message from Hee. In it, she details every aspect of the plan so Ryu can successfully foil it. Her only request in exchange for the information is that he not be the one to go after her. Send someone else, anyone else, but she couldn't face Ryu again. It's a staggering scene, one that perfectly illustrates the depth of Ryu's loss.

Even among the tough guys, nary a dry eye is to be found as the movie draws to a close.

After I finished this film, I sat in quiet, stupefied awe for a while, then immediately watched it again. The movie got a lot of hype at home, and I think it more than lives up to it. It's one of the most action-packed, exhilarating, emotional films I've seen in decades. It has the emotional impact of The Killer but avoids being as melodramatic. It's an incredible, draining experience. And the action is simply incredible. Shiri eschews the bullet ballet of heroic bloodshed while maintaining the emotion, and goes for a grittier, realistic approach while at the same time still remaining highly stylish. It's like a mix of 1980's John Woo with films like Heat. In fact, this movie reminds me of Heat in several ways, including the flawed cop and the well-developed criminals as well as several stylistic aspects.

Upon its release in South Korea, Shiri was a blockbuster. It knocked Titanic out of the number one spot and quickly became Korea's highest grossing film. With the collapse of the Hong Kong film industry and everything about Japan these days being lukewarm at best, South Korea has the only domestic film industry that regularly out-gross American imports. With this much hype surrounded it, I was sure there was no way Shiri could deliver, at least not at the level that was being claimed. I'm happy to say I was dead wrong. The film is fantastic, breathtakingly paced, and exquisitely structured.

I don't get wildly excited by movies that much anymore. I've seen just about everything at this point, and as I've said before it may not take much to please me but it does take a lot to wow me. Shiri is the type of movie that reminded me of why I developed such a passion for the cinema. It has everything and executes its game plan without flaw. Whether or not South Korea can keep it up remains to be seen, but other recent action films from that divided nation look promising. In the wasteland that is the modern action film genre, Shiri is the only movie that can go toe-to-toe with the films of the past or the films of Takeshi Kitano.

The lead cast is superb, and the supporting cast is great as well. Particularly cool is a young cop who is treated as sort of the office nerd throughout most of the film until he showcases his talents at the end and becomes one of the central players during the final confrontation between the Special Ops and the North Korean soldiers. I've already covered how amazing Choi Min-sik is in this film, but let's not leave out Kim Yoon-jin as Hee. She is remarkable, though she needs to brush up on pretending to take a drink from a bottle. She brings an emotional depth and spiritual/physical strength to her character that is almost never found in a female in an action film. Most of the time, the action film idea of a strong woman is just to have her beat people up same as the guys. Hee is a different type of character, though. Total and absolute bad-ass, no doubt, but it's the depth of her character and the sacrifices she forces herself to make that make her truly memorable as one of the most powerful female characters in action film history.

While the politics and symbolism are not exactly subtle, they also manage to avoid being heavy-handed. There is never any, "This is right, this is wrong" proclamation the way you see in American movies that attempt to have a message (Traffic being a notable exception). Instead, the politics serve to add extra electricity to the film, just as they did in the 1970s in films from the US and Italy. shiri reminds us that action films can still be good, and films can still be political without being preachy and condescending. Are you listening, Susan Sarandon?

The gore will no doubt turn some people off, just as I'm sure it will attract others. It's pretty graphic stuff, but I'm one to say it's actually positive to see the negative aspects of violence. When people get shot, they bleed. They bleed a lot. It's not something that is clean. American action films love to up the body count while lowering the actual amount of bloodshed, thus making the violence far more cartoonish and far more inviting. Watching some poor cop get his kneecaps blown off in Shiri will not make you want to pick up a gun.

Speaking of which, man alive do a lot of cops die in this film. The uniform with all the packs and the hood and the goggles and the neat guns may look ultra-slick, but you might as well be wearing one of those red shirts in the old Star Trek series. Like I said, in at least one part of the film it's used to great effect.

I really can't say enough great things about Shiri. It made me feel like I was discovering something for the first time. If this film doesn't obtain the same sort of lofty cult status that movies like The Killer and Hana Bi have obtained, then the world truly is obtuse. If you are in search of the best action films in a decade, then you need look no further than Shiri.

Labels: Action, Country: Korea, Espionage, Year: 1999