Gyoseob

I'm an egyptian, don't know much about Afghanistan other than what's on the media (which is not true most of the time) but anyway i have that stereotypical image of Afghans and Taliban.

I like that the movie is based on a true story, the makers did not hide the fact that the missionaries were going "to spread Christianity" in a "strict Muslim country" and they showed both sides of Afghanistan, kind people who believe in peace and respect to all humans and extremists who use violence for their own benefits.

Not here to defend my religion or give lectures about Islam, but it breaks my heart that people might think most of us are extreme, but I wanna thank the makers for showing that being extreme has nothing to do with religions.

Also, love the locations and sets, even the editing is fabulous, i felt convinced most of the time. Huge applause for the cast, Hyun Bin sir your dedication to every character never fails to amaze me.

...before giving up. I'm a big fan of Hyun Bin, but this script was tedious. And who were the idiot missionaries who thought it was a good idea to go into Afghanistan? I mean seriously. I get that the movie is based on a real-life incident, but all that effort to rescue people who should have known better. This is what I call a man movie. There are no female leads. It's men talking and fighting. If you are a man, you might like it. If you are a woman, maybe not.

Um, since when is there a word minimum for reviews? I'm just going to type here until I fill up the required characters. Almost done. Whew.

It's taken a while for this true story about the 2007 hostage crisis in Afghanistan to come to the screen but it was worth the wait. This movie isn't a non stop action thriller like Escape from Mogadishu. It deals realistically with the process of negotiation with the Taliban step by step with mistakes and all the back and forth dealings. This isn't boring - it's fascinating. The acting is fine. As the negotiator Hwang Jung Min is a superb actor totally convincing - check him out in Narco Saints. Hyun Bin looks sufficiently bronzed and bearded to play a Korean who has been there for a while and knows the ways of the country. Although he has one tense action sequence his character is not a superhero here and that's good. He screws up too. When it's a true story like this one you don't need unrealistic heroics. Need to understand missionaries were not welcome there because of the religious aspect but volunteers to help the people were.

Production is top notch with on location filming in Jordan and the hellish atmosphere of Afghanistan captured well. You can almost feel the heat and dust. The viewer is brought face to face with the Taliban and that's better than some of the Hollywood treatments of the subject which seem redacted and remote like Zero Dark 30. No torture here or focus on the killings. There is an overwhelming lesson here about not recklessly going into dangerous countries especially when warned. See all the trouble it caused.

I have to say the cinematography and landscapes was top-notch in this action drama thriller, however, it certainly was lacking in the action department. In the 108 min runtime, it's all pretty much dramatics with a few thrills and the very little action scenes here and there. The flow of the story was great, and all casting and performances were convincing. The score and direction was also very good. My main let-down was the lack of any real action, especially comparing this to similar films like The Covenant and Kandahar, plus I found the main narrative - the negotiator and the negotiations was a little underwhelming and didn't make much sense. Nevertheless, a decent one-time watch on a historical true-events story.

In 2006 a group of South Korean missionaries was taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The very conservative moslim Taliban are no friends of anything other than their own belief, and as soon as they find out that the hostages are not volunteers, as they make them believe, they give the other side a hard time to get them released. It results in a complicated poker game of exchanges of hostages, prisoners and money. Hyun Bin is almost like a Korean James Bond involved in this action drama that contains a few very gripping scenes. Especially one pursuit is very well made. The whole story is well told down to every detail.