Swiri finally comes to DVD this week since it's successful foreign run in 1999. The movie has enough bullets, action and blood to make even the biggest John Woo fan stand up and clap with admiration.
The story is set in modern day South Korea and follows two cops on the trail of a female assassin known only to them as Hee. On the trail, they always find themselves two steps behind, and the blood and body count continue to grow.
The opening scenes of Hee in training is a scene that I am sure Paul Anderson III wanted to duplicate with Kurt Russell in the 1998 flop Soldier. Yoon-jin Kim plays her role perfectly as the assassin who later becomes torn between her mission and her love interest (who is one of the cops on her trail).
Throughout the story, director Je-gyu Kang uses a fish backdrop (you will have to see the movie to understand) and a unification soccer game between both South and North Korea, to keep the audience guessing as to their symbolic reference.
Plot details aside, the movie is about violence. And boy does it deliver. It has a shoot out scene that would remind movie watchers of Michael Mann's Heat, and a climax that would be a cross between Bruce Willis' The Last Boy Scout and John Woo's Hard Boiled.
Bullet for bullet, this is one of the best action films you are likely to see out of a foreign market. It's one of those rare Die Hard type movies that you can even turn the subtitles off and sit and watch the corpses pile up.
Quite large in Korea back in 1999 and searched for relentlessly by movie enthusiasts, the transfer to DVD is sharp and should not be missed!
The story is set in modern day South Korea and follows two cops on the trail of a female assassin known only to them as Hee. On the trail, they always find themselves two steps behind, and the blood and body count continue to grow.
The opening scenes of Hee in training is a scene that I am sure Paul Anderson III wanted to duplicate with Kurt Russell in the 1998 flop Soldier. Yoon-jin Kim plays her role perfectly as the assassin who later becomes torn between her mission and her love interest (who is one of the cops on her trail).
Throughout the story, director Je-gyu Kang uses a fish backdrop (you will have to see the movie to understand) and a unification soccer game between both South and North Korea, to keep the audience guessing as to their symbolic reference.
Plot details aside, the movie is about violence. And boy does it deliver. It has a shoot out scene that would remind movie watchers of Michael Mann's Heat, and a climax that would be a cross between Bruce Willis' The Last Boy Scout and John Woo's Hard Boiled.
Bullet for bullet, this is one of the best action films you are likely to see out of a foreign market. It's one of those rare Die Hard type movies that you can even turn the subtitles off and sit and watch the corpses pile up.
Quite large in Korea back in 1999 and searched for relentlessly by movie enthusiasts, the transfer to DVD is sharp and should not be missed!