It's a watchable movie especially for Korean film fans. From the beginning, you know where it is going, yet good to watch. A mixture of Thriller, Action and Drama. Not going deep into the political outer cover, this is a movie about the brotherly affection between two lonely souls, from South and North Korea.
Plot summary
A North Korean killer known as "Shadow" is sent to assassinate an important dissident who found refuge in Seoul. He is helped by two sleeping agents: Son Tae-soon as look-out, and Song Ji-won, an elite fighter. The North Koreans have not counted with Lee Han-gyoo, from the South Korean National Intelligence Service, who has been tracking them and closes in with his men. Han-gyoo has not counted with the North Koreans' skill and ruthlessness. True to his reputation, "Shadow" disappears. Ji-won manages to escape, but cannot return to his country, where he is suspected to be a traitor, nor defect, for this means certain death for his wife and daughter who remained in North Korea. Discredited, Han-gyoo is fired from the NIS. Several years later, Ji-won and Han-gyoo meet unexpectedly, and pick up their confrontation -- but not quite from where they left it off.
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Not great, but good to watch.
Predictable feel good N S buddy movie
Song Kang Ho movies are generally good because he is so watchable. He has a good enough rapport with younger actor Gang Dong Won who looks tortured enough as N Korean agent with a heart. It's watchable to see how they bond and come to help each other. As always with these North South movies there is a bond of reconciliation. The plot is quite clear and neartly constructed if predictable. I liked the tone is fairly comic and doesn't take itself too seriously.
Its okay
South Korean agent in charge of an attempt to catch a North Korean assassin named Shadow resigns when it all goes south. Six years later he hooks with and plays cat and mouse with an North Korean agent who was branded a traitor as the result of the same botched job.
Fantastic action sequences get lost in a action/buddy/comedy that with a few changes might very well have come from Hollywood. The problem with the film is the center section of the film where the two men try to figure out what the other one is doing without letting on what their own situation is (both think that the other is better connected to the other side than they really are) I liked it but I didn't fall in love with it. Certainly it was a film that made me ponder what such a clear Hollywood clone was doing in the New York Asian Film Festival which strives to promote the un-Hollywood film or films unlikely to get a US release, I can see this very clearly getting a US DVD release if nothing else.
Not a bad film by any stretch, its just not a particularly remarkable one.