Shiri (1999) Reviews

Billed as Full Metal Jacket meets Heat meets Nikita, Kang Je Gyu directs this wildly popular action-thriller about tensions between North and South Korea. The film opens with agents in North Korean spy school T19 engaged in an unbelievably difficult rigorous training regime. The school's fanatically committed leader, Park Mu Young (Choi Min Sik) singles out the beautiful and sinewy Lee Bang Hee (Kim Yun Jin), an ace student and a deadeye shot, for a top-secret mission. A couple of years later, South Korean intelligence agents are baffled by a spate of murders of scientists working on a top-secret defense project. Agents Yu Jong Won (Han Suk Kyu) and Lee Jang Gil (Song Kang Ho) suspect the North Korean Lee but cannot locate her. One day, Yu finally spots Lee Bang Hee icing an arms dealer with a sniper rifle. At the same time, North Korean spy Park Mu Young and his fellow commandos take out a military convoy and swipe a top-secret substance called CTX, an explosive that is completely undetectable. Park and Lee's plan slowly becomes horribly apparent: to blow up a North and South Korean friendship soccer game, launching a war that will bring South Korea under the North's hegemony. At the same time, South Korean intelligence is starting to suspect a mole in their midst and evidence seems to point to Yu's girlfriend. This film was screened at the 1999 Pusan Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi