Swiri (1999) * * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 2000 by Serdar Yegulalp
"Swiri" broke all box-office records in its native South Korea when it was released, outgrossing even "Titanic". Its US$2.2M budget made it the most expensive Korean movie yet (with a good chunk of the money put up by Samsung, whose logos feature predominantly throughout). Maybe it's not surprising that the movie in question was created in blatant imitation of the slick Hollywood products it would be forced to compete with in Korean theaters.
What we have here is pretty much a Korean take on the Simpson/Bruckheimer formula: a fast-moving thrill machine with slick visuals, tons of action, and a certain amount of sentiment (in this case, a 'cross-the-border love story). It works as entertainment, and people who've never seen a Korean movie in their lives will be able to dive right in. But it's resoundingly hollow.
The first few scenes are shatteringly violent, showing North Korean prisoners being used as training dummies in a sickening covert-ops exercise. One of the spies is Hee, a North Korean female sharpshooter who's being sent South to perform assassinations. (The movie misses a bet by not having her leave a calling card at every killing, but I guess they figured even that would have been excessive.) The hero is Won, a South Korean special agent who's been on the tail of Hee for quite some time. He suspects a leak in his department when one of their contacts is gunned down in front of them, and stumbles into a plot that (MacGuffin time!) involves a special chemical bomb that can level city blocks.
The movie wastes no time in deciding if it's going to be a political thriller or a shoot-em-up -- we get a token amount of pontificating and introspection about the North and South, and then gobs of gunplay. There is also time for a romance between two major characters, all the pieces of which are out of the standard kit of movie love stories. We do get an explanation of the cryptic title, though -- although it's less than edifying, and more than a little maudlin.
And for a movie that comes from completely outside Hollywood, it's funny how many of the cliches are here. True to form, any movie that mentions a bomb and that does not provide at least one building being blown up is cheating us, and we do in fact get exactly that (although it would be criminal of me to see which one or when). We also get the handy Aquarium Rule (thank you, Roger Ebert), which dictates that any movie with aquariums in it is going to have them shot to pieces. Speaking of visual cliches, if I see one more shot of a door being kicked open by a bunch of guys with flashlights strapped to their guns, I'll puke. We get that three times here.
I liked "Swiri" without ever really getting involved in it. It's a well-made exercise; it looks and sounds as good as anything Hollywood ever put out. If it were released here in a dubbed edition, it might do fairly well. In fact, director Kang Jae-gyu has hinted that was exactly his aim. But it's a little saddening how unadventurous it really is. Korea has managed to produce one of the best, most thoughtful films of all time ("Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?"); with "Swiri", it's clear they can make big entertainment machines as well. Here's hoping they keep it on an even keel.
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