Steel rain

Simply excellent movie in most every way.

Takes a while to get going, and the very opening scenes are very out of place with the rest, and not necessary even. Because the rest is such a trope-buster, this sticks out.

I think my favorite example - being vague to not give anything away - is when the bad guys stage a diversionary attack about halfway through and all the soldiers leave where our main characters are guarding the MacGuffin. Because not /every/ guard or soldier leaves, and the remaining ones are brave, skilled, and professional. The improbably-supervillain leader of the bad guy assault doesn't just walk through, and many, many of his people are killed, on the way to the main-character confrontation. Unlike every horror movie and almost all action movies, you believe it. The good guys don't die because they are NPCs but because they were fooled, they fell to overwhelming odds, etc. The plausible odds make it that much more engaging.

And at the structural level, it's just perfect also. A major character is a senior bureaucrat, so there's a natural link back to the war cabinet, and to the spies of other nations, to allow us to see the whole situation, from top to bottom, with minimal jumping around; we follow the main characters through much of the action quite seamlessly.

Downsides were mostly in that it was a purely Korean production. There was enough US involvement in the plot that a slight joint production would have helped make the American actors seem less trite in characterization, and given them more plausible dialogue. Lots of "simulations" for some reason.

The Netflix version has mediocre captions. Korean seems right, but the English is not captioned and is often very hard to understand. Some signs are titled but not others, or not on-screen information that's important to the plot. Hopefully that will get better eventually also.

This movie is incredibly relevant these days because of the current tension between North Korea and the US, South Korea, and Japan. No doubt that is precisely why it was made too. The movie in my opinion is very good, with an underlying moral messages about peace for all Koreans. It shows problems with both sides. The main actors do a great job, and there is both drama and action here, both of which in my opinion are done well. Do yourself a favour and watch a movie that is not only entertaining (which this one most certainly is), but which also has a relevant and important message, for once.

Just saw it on Netflix, really good movie, everything was done well, script, acting, effects, locations, direction and cinematography. 10/10. Please keep making more motion pictures like this!

If you like this, you'd probably also like Bad Guys Vile City (over the top violence, but good story and acting) and Stranger (Secret Forest) on Netflix. The only issue I have is having to pause and go back sometimes to read the dialogue. Netflix only has Korean (of course) and Spanish SAP, no English.

This is a surprising film that conveys a Korean perspective on unification much different than what we get from the US media. In an action packed spy thriller, the story is the humanity of two agents from the North and South learning to trust and even like each other as the symbol that against all odds, unification of Korea is not just a pipe dream. There are subtle and not so subtle digs and critique of the USA's role in the Korean problem. The theme of the film is that the bad guys on both sides are the people who are using the division of Korea for their own personal power and profit and that is much worse than the division itself.

Well made complicated North and South Korea political and nuclear thriller. Its hard to follow in parts. Korean speakers will find this more understandable probably and appreciate the complicated politics. I liked the comic and touching relationship between the two main actors.