Gut Nuiuseu

Good news is a pretty good film. Set i 1970 a plane is hijacked carrying japanese nationals by a group of amatures that want it flown to north korea. This is where Sul Kyung-gu steps in as no body and hatches a plan along with some pilots and authorities to make them believe they have landed in north when really they are going to the south; this movie is based on a real event but its saterised and I found some pretty fun moments in this and a strong acted cast; the way in which this film is shot reminded me of a wes anderson movie and that added another layer to this.

I really had doubts this was gonna be a good movie as people claimed in the beginning with how it starts and it takes a little for the wheels to start turning properly and to build a little depth and layers to the characters and the story, I mean the terrorists start out as unhinged maniacs and the KCIA guy is all over the place as well and I thought oh no two hours of this?

But it became twisty-turney and I started to like it and it kept momentum right up to the end.

It's still a little too long and the beginning is not the best but it's a good one overall.

Also, why are the men so good-looking in this movie? Movie magic right? The pilots are good-looking, the terrorist chief is, the air controller, the Japanese deputy minister, of course in their own different way but come on... Can't say I minded though, but it was staring me in the face. These are actors.

Anyway, the politics of power and shifting blame and accountability are used for laughs and it is funny but also upsetting at the same time. Both on the Korean domestic front and between the three nations. Geopolitics is crazy. Everybody agreeing to pretend things didn't happen. So how come we now know?

As I was expecting a typical thriller about a plane hijacking, I was instead met with an impressive cinematic language that tells the story through masterful use of black humour.

It's common to see traces of influence among leading directors, but Byun Sung-hyun's film stands out as truly unique. I watched it with full appreciation from beginning to end.

The acting is five-star across the board. The performances of Sul Kyung-gu, Hong Kyung, and Ryu Seung-beom are especially remarkable. Just a small suggestion - although it's not the filmmakers' fault, the IMDb crew list should be better prepared with names and photos, as Western audiences are often unfamiliar with Korean or Japanese names. These artists truly deserve wider recognition.

I'm very pleased to have watched this movie. Thank you!

In some ways it is ludicrous, and like epic films the set and the props are larger than the actors - think of disaster films where a ship or a building take centre place. Here the plane and radar equipment and the scale of the operations are all impressive. The acting is not impressive and a little hysterical at times. In some crazy way it works. Of course there is the dark history in the region, how Korea was occupied by Japan, then the US occupied Japan and then Korea. All those politics are played here with a bias toward South Korea. Though in the acting, the pilots and the Japanese Red Army characters are quite dynamic - indeed why aren't all the characters named? Is it potential backlash? I particularly think the woman Red Army fanatic played that role well.

For a change, Netflix has another positive surprise in store, as is so often the case with Asian productions. Or is it almost exclusively Asian productions? 'Good News' is a bitterly angry political satire with witty humour. Careerists, shadow men, opportunists, idealists, populists, media jackals - all are exaggerated and reduced to absurdity with a precisely punctuated density of gags. Above all, the ugly entanglements within civil service hierarchies and the life-strangling shackles of bureaucracy are dissected with a black humour that has not been seen in a long time. The format mixes thriller and comedy, portraying the absurdity of the conflict between North and South Korea, which is so characteristic of our humanity, through the lens of a single event. From the South Korean perspective, of course, as that is where the film comes from, but with sufficient self-criticism. I was completely unprepared, especially for such enthusiasm.