Who knew? Before Captain "Sully" made his miracle emergency landing on the Hudson Bay, in New York in 2009, a Korean pilot accomplished an equally harrowing feat on the other side of the globe decades earlier. I caught this movie by accident and didn't know what to expect. Was very pleasantly surprised. The all-Korean cast did a great job of conveying the true story of a hijacked plane that was ordered to fly to communist North Korea, re-routing the frightened passengers off their scheduled flight to Seoul. The story begins with a rookie, first officer who has been outcast among his fellow pilots for refuting to follow orders earlier when a plane had been hijacked to North Korea, and he was ordered to shoot one of the plane's engines to disable the plane and stop it from reaching the communist border. Those passengers were hijacked to North Korea in 1969, detained for months and released to South Korea where they were ostracized and treated as spies in their own communities. The pilots, and crew of that plane were never returned to South Korea because they had special skills and training. Although the rookie first officer has completed his training, he has never been allowed to do a solo landing due to the other pilots' dislike and mistrust of him. On this day in January 1971, the captain tells him he wants him to do the landing and he is very pleased that he will finally get an opportunity. However, he does not know that this will be a very memorable day for a number of reasons. A bitter young man has made his way on the plane with several bombs that he uses to blow a hole in the plane and threaten the frightened passengers. The hijacker demands that the pilot and first officer take him to North Korea. Over the course of the movie, we see some amazing flying stunts as the rookie officer tries to outmaneuver the vicious hijacker who unleashes his violence on both the passengers, crew and first officer and captain. At the same time, the Air Force has launched two fighter planes and ordered them to shoot the planes engines to disable it from crossing the border. North Korea has also launched its fighter jets. This movie pulls all of the right strings. It is action packed, and I certainly shed a tear or two when I realized it was a true story. Definitely stay for the closing shots and credits. Very moving.
