Review by: Jonathan Wong
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The press around this movie was the first thing that caught my
attention. Lines that read like "Captivated 6 million
viewers", "Korea's most sold-out movie.". Now
wouldn't you be a slightest bit interested as well? After
watching the movie, I understand why the movie did so well.
For starters, I thought the
story was pretty interesting. It takes place at a time when
North and South Korea are in peace negotiations and are about
to reunite. However, there seems to be malicious plot to
disrupt the peace proceedings. Two special agents, Ryu and
Lee, are caught in the midst of it as they try to unravel a
series of assassinations. I know it sounds like the standard
no-brainer action movie plot, but the story has its merits and
it's worth the watch to find out what they are.
As a movie categorised as an
action/drama, a running time of 2 hours is pretty significant.
But to say the least, the time was well used. Most of the main
characters, including the bad guys are well developed. And as
the movie's goes on, you'll find that it is quite a
well-thought out movie. However, there were some points in the
movie where I was left a little confused as to what was
actually going on. Luckily, this didn't happen too often and
left the flow of the movie unaffected.
And there's plenty of action.
They are numerous gun-fights throughout the movie, so action
fans will find this quite a gem. Though at times, I couldn't
help but notice that some of them ever seems to run out of
ammo. I supposed it has to be influenced by the fact that in
older Hollywood action movies, every person with a gun has an
infinite amount of ammunition.
Gun enthusiasts would also like
this movie as there are quite a number of well-known weapons
used in this movie. For example the H&K MP5 sub-machine
gun (I apologise to those of you who don't have the slightest
idea what that is). There are also some very nicely done
sniper sequences in the movie, though not many.
The bottomline is, go watch
this movie. If you can't understand Cantonese, read the
subtitles. For an Asian movie, it definitely holds its own
against the barrage of Hollywood productions heading our way
these days.
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Ryu
and Lee are special agents of O.P., the nation's top secret
intelligence service. An arms smuggler, Lim, is shot by a
sniper after volunteering to tell them some important
information. From the scene of Lim's death, Ryu instinctively
suspects the involvement of Hee, the best sniper of the
Special Force of North Korea. She had previously assassinated
many government officials and hid herself from the unrelenting
pursuit of Ryu. The fact that she had always managed to stay
ahead of all O.P.'s decisive moves tells them of a secret
efflux of the agency's intelligence and alerts them to look
out for internal spies, thus creating a delicate and
suspenseful situation between Ryu and Lee.
