The Flu (15.)
Directed by Sung Su-kim.
Starring Jung Hyuk, Soo-ae, Park Min-ah, Ma Dong-seok, Lee Hui-joon and Boris Stout. Korean with subtitles. 122 mins
This story of an deadly new strain of Avian flu epidemic that strikes down an affluent city on the outskirts of Seoul and the authorities attempts to quarantine and control it, is fast paced, chilling, grippingly mounted and very silly.
The movie is an uneasy hybrid of two diametrically opposed movies. One movie is a stark and unsettling portrayal of civilisation being swept aside by the forces of nature. The other is a shameless rom com in which a loveable rescue worker falls for a rather haughty doctor he rescues from a dangling car and gets to know through her precocious young daughter. (Played by Park Min-ah whose performance hurtles back and forth between cute and obnoxious until it blurs into a kind of hateful adorability.) The mother turns out to be an expert on epidemics and the whole crisis is seen through the prism of their relationship.
Now both these films are appealing but the cross pollination between the two is going to be a bit hard to take for western audiences. In Korea where they turn out TV soaps that are adored by people all over the east, these kinds of melodramatic extremes are easy to take but here it often seems ludicrously contrived. Still, it is handsomely made, rattles along entertainingly and you don’t slump out of the cinema afterwards carrying the weight of despair that Contagion dumped in your lap.
Directed by Sung Su-kim.
Starring Jung Hyuk, Soo-ae, Park Min-ah, Ma Dong-seok, Lee Hui-joon and Boris Stout. Korean with subtitles. 122 mins
This story of an deadly new strain of Avian flu epidemic that strikes down an affluent city on the outskirts of Seoul and the authorities attempts to quarantine and control it, is fast paced, chilling, grippingly mounted and very silly.
The movie is an uneasy hybrid of two diametrically opposed movies. One movie is a stark and unsettling portrayal of civilisation being swept aside by the forces of nature. The other is a shameless rom com in which a loveable rescue worker falls for a rather haughty doctor he rescues from a dangling car and gets to know through her precocious young daughter. (Played by Park Min-ah whose performance hurtles back and forth between cute and obnoxious until it blurs into a kind of hateful adorability.) The mother turns out to be an expert on epidemics and the whole crisis is seen through the prism of their relationship.
Now both these films are appealing but the cross pollination between the two is going to be a bit hard to take for western audiences. In Korea where they turn out TV soaps that are adored by people all over the east, these kinds of melodramatic extremes are easy to take but here it often seems ludicrously contrived. Still, it is handsomely made, rattles along entertainingly and you don’t slump out of the cinema afterwards carrying the weight of despair that Contagion dumped in your lap.
