Tenet (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk)
	Actors: John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Robert Pattinson (Twilight), Elizabeth Debicki
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 02.09.2020, CINEMA theater

Synopsis: The Protagonist of this story (Washington) is recruited to be part of a secret group protecting Society against attacks from the Future.   Review: Christopher Nolan likes to play with our senses and to keep us disoriented. Between more linear movies although in different genres (Super-hero movie with his Dark Knight trilogy, Mystery with The Prestige, SF with Interstellar, War Drama with Dunkirk), he inserts more original ones like Memento, Inception or this Tenet which reminds of those two others. In the middle of this strange year that is 2020, I took my chance by going to slowly re-opening Cinemas and felt safe: rows in front of me and behind left empty as well as two seats on each side. The added advantage was to keep the pop-corn eaters at a distance, and they are numerous in that cinema venue which I don't like, but I had little choice. My main feeling when leaving the theater was frustration. Frustration at missing so many things because of dialogs too hard for me to follow. The fact that I am not native speaker isn't helping but I very rarely have the problem, showing that Tenet was particularly tough on me. Indeed I noticed that dialogs are elliptic (not all elements are given), half-spoken under the main actor's beard (as we say in French) and sometimes in a noisy environment. Beyond my understanding of English, those problems I had with the dialogs are director's intentional choices, either when writing them, recording the footage or editing the sound. In the worst of it I felt like in the recent bad James Bond movies (Quantum of Solace I am talking about you), showing scenes switching from country to country with barely understandable justification in between of why travel there (apart that it looks good on film). And a missed dialog can make you misunderstand part of the movie. For example I thought the Protagonist and Niel knew each other before we see them first meet. OK I hate when movies repeat the same information many times or use flashbacks to deal with an inattentive audience, but in Tenet there seems to be to redundancy at all. There is still a lot that I loved about this movie, starting with the convoluted but original story (again, reminding of Memento and Inception). The visual effects are efficient and seem simple but I bet it was in the end not so easy to blend together footage going forward and backwards. Even less simple was probably for the director and the team to keep track of who is doing what and in which order. This is an extra dimension film crews don't have to deal with in other movies. Kudos to them for that. As usual with Nolan, the soundtrack is well-fitting and many shots look very good (like the Opera opening scene). John David Washington plays decently enough, but I was more impressed by the transformation of Robert Pattinson since his Twilight days (he hadn't impressed me in Cosmopolis yet). Watching the movie a second time and/or with sub-titles would probably improve my rating but for now, so it is.   Rating: 6 /10

The Firm (1993)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1993
	Director: Sydney Pollack (Tootsie)
	Actors: Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible 1-5, Collateral Dammage), Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman (Enemy of the State), Ed Harris (The Truman Show)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 08.08.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: A young lawyer (Cruise) joins a prestigious law firm only to discover that it has a sinister dark side.
Review: After recently watching The Pelican Brief, I wanted to complete watching the best four 90's cinema adaptations of John Grisham novels. No national conspiracy in this one, but another lawyer story originally taking place outside of the court. In 1993 Tom Cruise was at the top of his career, if you consider it ever went down. He just starred in Top Gun, Cocktail, Rain Man, Days of Thunder and A Few Good Men, and was about to be in Mission: Impossible, a choice which will dominate his career to this day. Just to say that the movie features a young Tom Cruise playing a young ambitious character, different from the more mature Action Hero roles we now see him in. Oh there is some action in this movie and you get to see the actor run like he does so well, but it is definitely more focused on story and characters. This plays very well with a cast that includes Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Jake Busey, Hal Holbrook and many others. The 90's natural acting is for me the strongest point of the movie. You really root for those characters and suffer to see what they go through. The plot is somehow predictable but the intrigue keeps you glued to the movie nonetheless, thanks to many twists and turns rendering the story less linear than you would expect. A movie which confirms that 90's Cinema was good at something.
Rating: 7 /10

The Berlin Bride (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Michael Bartlett
	Actors: Taylor Baldschun, Michael Bartlett, Brynmor Jones
	Country: USA, D
	Genre: Drama, Thriller, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 02.07.2020, FANTASPOA2020, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: Two oddball Berliners discover the abandoned appendages of a mannequin. Separately, and with grotesque consequence, they come to terms with their disjointed mate.
Review: From the synopsis and the poster of the movie, I was expecting more of a Giallo (or something like Anguish) and didn't get much of it apart from the strange mannequin fetishism and the setting in the 80's. Those are also the two best things in this movie. I am in particular amazed at how the director could recreate the Berlin of 1986 in its exterior scenes, in spite of a probable low budget. It is also remarkable to see this kind of production in Europe and I can only encourage it. Finally another characteristic of the movie is that it is almost without dialogs, apart from a few lines in German or English, which makes it easy to watch for anybody even without sub-titles. The rest of the movie feels sometimes like a psychedelic trip, as we see the mannequin taking a more and more important part in the life of our two protagonists, both weird in their own way. A movie unfortunately not as rich and memorable as I thought it would be.
Rating: 5 /10

Precarious (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Wes Terray
	Actors: Juliana Frick, Dashiell Hillman, Andrey Pfening
	Country: USA
	Genre: Fantasy, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 29.07.2020, FANTASPOA2020, 14"computer screen.
Synopsis: After being shot with arrows by a mysterious woman, Henry (Pfening) is held by the Police at the Doctor's office from where he then escapes.
Review: I had a good feeling when deciding to watch this movie and was not disappointed. The opening credits put you right in the mood for it: slowly moving camera over pieces of props with the crew's names on it, and the title made out of folded pages of a book, as shown on the photo below this post. Who nowadays makes the effort to design such a sequence? In Precarious, it was the director Wes Terry and his Art director Louise Franco who both did a fantastic job at giving the movie this special 60's atmosphere, sometimes reminding of an episode of The Twilight Zone. I found an interview on Filmink where the director tells you what you need to know about the genesis of the project, and how he could make it happen with just a fixed idea and a reduced crew, albeit it took him seven years to do so. Other members of the crew making the movie what it is are the motivated actors and the composer Ben Eshbach who wrote the melodies which carry the audience along the adventure. You have to love the attention to details in the movie and the perfect framing. Hard to believe the sets were all built in the director's apartment! There are a few moments throughout the movie that give it away however, and hint that it was produced with limited means: the acting at some moments, the cheapness of some set pieces, the lighting and the sound recording. But this is easily forgiven for a first full-length feature, and in comparison with the richness of other aspects. I love that the movie takes its time to reveal the characters and what this is all about, this practice has become far too rare in modern cinema where you are usually thrown into the action by fear that you wold zap to another channel, because who watches full movies in a (home-)cinema nowadays? The way the mystery slowly unravels reminded me of movies by David Lynch, also maybe partly because of the resemblance between the main actor Andrey Pfening and Lynch's favorite Kyle MacLachlan (in Blue Velvet for example). A nice discovery which makes me ever more happy to follow movie Festivals.
Rating: 7 /10

Capricorn One (1977)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1977
	Director: Peter Hyams (2010, Timecop, The Relic)
	Actors: Elliott Gould (Friends, Ocean 11), James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, O. J. Simpson (The Naked Gun)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 28.07.2020, VOD, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: About to be launched on the first flight to Mars, the team of astronauts is discreetly evacuated and led to a hidden location in the desert while the mission goes on without them.
Review: I had heard about this movie in the past, but now that I stumbled on it again while watching YouTube videos and reading Wikipedia entries about the conspiracy theory around the 1969 Moon landing, I had to see it. Released eight years only after Apollo 11, the movie is indeed quoted as it "might have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity". Regardless, I found it a great and original topic for a Space Exploration movie, like I found with the vaguely similar twist in the 2014 mini-series Ascension. In the Cold War times where failure was not an option, it is interesting to see a movie exploring the question of faking success. And I found that the political and scientific context are well represented in the movie. The secret being kept by very few people is also more credible than a NASA-wide conspiracy which would be impossible to keep under wraps. What I found not so well done in the movie is the lack of excitement by the people on Earth for the first step on Mars. The tension of getting there and the culmination of the trip are not very well shown. The action on Earth is also not very exciting, the helicopter chases too choreographed and the music too present. And I found the image quality to be poor, not from the movie transfer to digital format, but apparently from the camera optics themselves (like I noted in The Final Countdown for example). But this is balanced by the more thrilling investigation by the journalist played by Elliott Gould, even though his near assassinations are strangely downplayed. An imperfect movie, but one I had to see.
Rating: 5 /10

The Old Guard (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
	Actors: Charlize Theron (Monster, Mad Max: Fury Road), KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts
	Country: USA
	Genre: Fantasy, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 27.07.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: A covert team of immortal mercenaries are suddenly exposed and must now fight to keep their identity a secret just as an unexpected new member is discovered.
Review: If there is a hype around this new Netflix movie, I don't understand it. OK it is a nice Fantasy story a-la-Highlander but where the Immortals are few and save others, while avoiding being discovered. The movie is well-made, Charlize Theron's performance is carrying it and there is enough action and violence to please the audience. The bad guy is also very antipathetic as head of a Big Pharma company, something which nobody likes either so it is easy to take sides. The Universe building is nice and complete but a bit too obviously pointing towards sequels. For some reason the movie left me unsatisfied. Maybe I was expecting too much of it. I didn't get as attached to the characters (and the adventures they went through) as I could have, except for the story of the loss of a former Immortal which left me having nightmares. The Old Guard is better than other Netflix failed attempts, but I didn't find it exceptional.
Rating: 5 /10

Joker (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Todd Philips (The Hangover 1-3, Due Date)
	Actors: Joaquin Phoenix (Signs), Robert De Niro (Taxi Driver), Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen
	Country: USA, CDN
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 07.10.2019, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, English version
Synopsis: In Gotham City, mentally troubled comedian Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is disregarded and mistreated by society. He then embarks on a downward spiral of revolution and bloody crime. This path brings him face-to-face with his alter-ego: the Joker.
Review: The storyline is a mirror of the Bruce Wayne story. "You made me!" We see here how Thomas Wayne (Cullen), Bruce's father, made Joker. And actually not only Thomas Wayne but what he represents. The rich people don't looking at the poor people in the streets, especially when these are getting problems or getting hurt or getting beaten. This is what happens to Arthur Fleck (Phoenix). Being beaten by bad kids first then by Wall Street white collars. Setting Joker as symbol for the class conflict, in parallel to a very personal drift of a mental illness, gives to the character a dimension that I did not remember from the Batman movies nor the Batman comic strips. The scenes of chaos on the streets generated by the Clowns look very similar to what the main TV channels present from the contesting movements such as Occupy, Gilets jaunes, anti-G8 demonstrations. Chaos, destruction. Like these TV channels, this movement and its claims are not really presented. To set a parallel with the mental illness of Joker rises questions on the message of the movie. The acting of Joaquin Phoenix is great! The story helps a lot in giving depth to the character. And he is blowing the screen. The physical transformation that he has followed to embody the mental illness of Joker is impressive. Robert De Niro may have been quite an inspiration for that. The other characters are secondary or very secondary. Even the huge Robert De Niro! The camera follows only Joaquin Phoenix and his transformation from the good boy taking care of his mother and bullied as an adult into the Joker conscientious of his mental illness and accepting it as a fact not to be treated by any drug. The mindset for the camera is to portrait Arthur and his transformation. This enhances the great acting of Phoenix. The movie lets some points open that will be used for sure for upcoming sequels of the Joker.
Rating: 7 /10

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Adrian Grunberg
	Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta
	Country: USA, HK, F, BG, E, S
	Genre: Action, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 24.07.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: Leaving peacefully on his father's ranch, John Rambo (Stallone) considers Gabriela like his daughter. When she wants to go to Mexico to look for her father, he advises against it.
Review: I thought Stallone had said goodbye to the franchise in 2008 with the powerful fourth movie soberly entitled Rambo, but he had to do one more and this one looks like the real goodbye, between the title which calls back to the first movie of the franchise First Blood (no, the name Rambo was not in the title of the first movie), and the end credits which shows scenes from all past movies. Looking at the list of Countries that co-financed the movie, it looks like the producers had to search everywhere to find the money to make this one which is to me a sign that it was maybe not much wanted. I hope they stop there but you never know... The movie is not too bad but doesn't rival with the first or fourth, and the second and third are dated but may be better as well when looked today with nostalgia. I wondered which enemy they would find for the Vietnam War veteran, and was slightly disappointed to see the story go the way of Taken or Death Wish but in Mexico. I was however pleased to see Stallone not play the confident killer like he does in The Expendables series for example, but sometimes nuance his acting to better match the traumatized Veteran we know him to be. I immediately caught 2-3 moments like that but they were unfortunately fleeting. Like in all movies in the franchise, Rambo goes through the usual defeat before rising again, and this time his motivation is stronger than ever, although I wondered if it had to be so. As the previous movie, this one is (very) generous with blood splatter and violent killings, but they look too much like fan-service and Rambo is not even in danger at any point. Still, those were the fun parts. For me, a fun addition to the series but one which was not needed.
Rating: 4 /10

Piranha (1978)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1978
	Director: Joe Dante (The Hole, Small Soldiers)
	Actors: Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies-Urich, Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller (Smaller Soldiers, Gremlins)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, Thriller, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 24.07.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: When two hikers disappear, city-girl Maggie (Menzies-Urich) is sent to find them. She meets loner Paul Grogan (Dillman), accidentally releases fresh-eating piranhas in a mountain river and then rushes to warn the public while fighting against the authorities.
Review: From the first minutes the movie announces its influences: Jaws (released three years earlier) and Creature from the Black Lagoon. After a Documentary The Movie Orgy and an extravagant Hollywood Boulevard, this is only the third film by Joe Dante which will become later famous for more horror and/or family-oriented films like The Howling, Gremins 1&2, Inner Space, Small Soldiers or The Hole, but always showing hs love for Cinema like in Matinee. I loved watching Piranha again. It is a pure Horror / Slasher / Creature Movie from the 70-80's but which doesn't take itself too seriously. There is a good although predictable story and enough Drama so that you stay attached to the characters, but you can only laugh at the caricatured characters like Paul Grogan, Colonel Waxman or Buck Gardner played by the excellent Dick Miller who went on to be in many Dante movies. And there are plenty of light moments and sex jokes flying around. This spirit will be honored in the 2010 remake Piranha 3D by Alexandre Aja and its poor 2012 sequel Piranha 3DD. You can tell that the team had fun shooting the movie, all actors are very natural and Heather Menzies-Urich in particular plays well the sexually liberated woman. The movie is produced by Exploitation King Roger Corman (see Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel), the director had fun too, as well as special effects specialists Rob Bottin and Phil Tippett (fresh out of his revolutionary work on the small movie Star Wars). Every time time I watch this movie I wonder about the purpose of the stop-motion animated walking piranha, and I came to the conclusion that it was just Tippett having fun! The movie is kind of Anti-military but doesn't forget that it is the heroin who released the piranhas, not knowing what she was doing after trespassing a clearly marked military installation. In general it has a fast pace and doesn't let you down. A classic.
Rating: 8 /10

The Man Standing Next (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Min-ho Woo
	Actors: Byung-hun Lee (I Saw the Devil, G. I. Joe 1-2, Ashfall, A Bittersweet Life), Sung-min Lee, Do-won Kwak
	Country: ROK
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 17.07.2020, VOD, 32" TV-screen
Synopsis: The weeks leading to the assassination of South-Korean dictator Park Chung-hee in 1979.
Review: Interesting to watch this more recent take at the same events as depicted in the acclaimed 2005 satire The President's Last Bang. Both were shown at the Far East Film Festival 2020. This one is more a cold fact-telling story giving more background on the motives for the assassination and cutting short right after it, so in a sense it is complementary to the other which was focusing on the few hours before the event and in the aftermath. The tone is of course totally different and I found that the satirical one of the The President's Last Bang makes a much more interesting movie. The characters are not as likeable or relatable in this one. For example the president is depicted in the other movie as old, lonely and in search for female company, less interested by the state's affairs. In this movie he is depicted more seriously and as you would expected from a ruthless military dictator. There is no doubt that The Man Standing Next is very well shot, including scenes abroad or with foreigners which gives it a larger scope. And it stars the Korean actor most famous outside of Korea: Byung-hun Lee, internationally known since his role as Storm Shadow in G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, as the T1000 in Terminator Genisys or his role in The Magnificent Seven. Asian Film Festival goers would know him since A Bittersweet Life, JSA, Three... Extremes, The Good the Bad the Weird, I Saw the Devil or the recent Ashfall. A movie well done but not very exciting. If you watch only one of the two, it should definitely be The President's Last Bang.
Rating: 5 /10

The President's Last Bang (2005)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2005
	Director: Sang-soo Im
	Actors: Suk-kyu Han, Yun-shik Baek, Jae-ho Song
	Country: ROK
	Genre: Thriller, Black Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 01.07.2020, FEFF2020, 14" computer screen
Synopsis: The hours around the assassination of South-Korean dictator Park Chung-hee in 1979 are filled with disappointment, betrayal and nonsense.
Review: A restored version of this movie was presented at the Far East Film Festival, partly as comparison with the most recently released The Man Standing Next which deals with the same events although in a different genre, more Action political Thriller than Black Comedy. This movie was originally presented at the Cannes Festival at a time when the incursion of Asian Cinema in Europe was still timid, even though the FEFF had started campaigning for it years prior and JoRafCinema would visit it for the first time that same year. And I understand how it could have made an impression at Cannes: it has qualities that were probably unexpected for a South Korean movie at the time: well shot, good-looking, a clear story well introduced even for non-Koreans, and most importantly a Satirical tone which the Cinema Elite presiding at Cannes would appreciate and like to promote. It had everything to be a success. I did not know much about this part of History, and by reading the Wikipedia entry after watching the movie, it seems like all the known facts are reproduced in the movie (although the source doesn't seem fully reliable). But again, beyond a simple story of what happened, the most important in this movie is the satire. I don't use that word very often, and haven't read a book or watched a movie that fits this description in a while, but The President's Last Bang seems like a textbook example. None of the characters are presented seriously like you would expect from their important political function. they look more like normal people or even teenagers fooling around. Real kudos to the film-makers for capturing such a tone and be consistent with it throughout the whole movie. Not boring for a moment, easy to follow and filled with details to make you smile in a corner (like the usual Korean aggression of shin-kicking). And when the movie looks a bit more confused, it reflects the events (today, still no one knows the real motivation of the killer). At the end of the movie, the cold reminder of the real fate of the characters involved makes you cringe, yet another proof that the movie hit the mark.
Rating: 8 /10

Sunod (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Carlo Ledesma
	Actors: Carmina Villaroel, Mylene Dizon, JC Santos
	Country: RP
	Genre: Thriller, Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 02.07.2020, FEFF2020, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: Olivia Sazon (Villaroel) is a single mother who would do anything for her young daughter suffering from a heart disease. She takes a night-job at a call center located in an old hospital, and after a few days meets a little girl in some abandoned corridors.
Review: The FEFF wouldn't be the FEFF without watching a Horror movie from Thailand of the Philippines (see our reports on the FEFF2006, FEFF2008 and FEFF2009). Sunod looks good and is well-made, but from the synopsis you can tell that it will not be very original. Classical Horror elements are put together but this is not enough to make something fresh: old hospital, little girl, night-time, mother under stress... I haven't watched a Horror movie in a long time, so at least I am glad this one didn't assault me with jump-scares but instead just gave me enough shivers a few times. I don't have much more to say: the images look good even at night, a secondary story and a twist keeps you entertained in the third act, the characters react rather naturally and their interactions are realistic, the mother goes (spoiler, highlight to read) 6th Sense by helping the ghost to free its soul. A good movie, just nothing extra-ordinary, but maybe that's enough in a saturated market which keeps on trying to overdo itself.
Rating: 6 /10

Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1994
	Director: Allan A. Goldstein (Raw Deal)
	Actors: Charles Bronson (The Magnificent 7, Death Wish 1-5), Lesley-Anne Down, Michael Parks (Kill Bill, Red State, Tusk)
	Country: USA, CDN
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 28.06.2020, Full HD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: Former vigilante Paul Kersey (Bronson) lives in New York hidden under the witness protection program. His relationship with his future wife's ex-husband (Parks), member of the organized crime, will escalate for the worst.
Review: This is the last movie of the series started in 1974 with the original Death Wish and remade in 2018. Bronson was over 70 at the time, the movie didn't get a cinema release (direct-to-DVD it was called) and you can tell when watching it that it was a last attempt at making some money out of the franchise. After punks and drug lords, the bad guys are now from the New York mafia. The story accumulates all the defaults from the previous ones and none of the qualities: Paul Kersey is yet in another serious relationship which comes with a pseudo-daughter, tragedy strikes him out of the blue (he really attracts the villains), he takes revenge using over-complicated schemes (like in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown) and takes far too much time to kill his victims. Add to that the 80's features (already outdated in the 90's) of exaggerated torture / violence, racism and many female topless scenes (from the opening scene to attract the male audience I guess), and you get a bad movie which doesn't know where to go. Cruelly missing is also the soundtrack that was helping the other movies, even the bad ones. The editing is also hectic. Bronson still plays a good Paul Kersey, although slower, and it is nice to see him facing Michael Parks (Red State, Tusk) but they are both underused. The one good decision in the movie was to keep it in New York which gives it the nice street vibe that the West Coast movies of the franchise don't have. Far from enough to save it.
Rating: 3 /10

Ashfall (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Byung-seo Kim, Hae-jun Lee
	Actors: Byung-hun Lee (G.I. Joe 1-2, I saw the Devil), Jung-woo Ha, Hye-jin Jeon
	Country: ROK
	Genre: Thriller, Action, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 26.06.2020, FEFF2020, 14" computer screen
Synopsis: In a fictional future where North Korea is about the be freed from nuclear weapons, Mount Baekdu, on the border between Korea and China, is about to erupt triggering a super-quake that will destroy half the peninsula.
Review: The big Action movie that opened the 22nd edition of the Far East Film Festival (even though you could watch it anytime as the Festival was online). I didn't have very high expectations of quality so I was not bothered by the poor special effects, the political winks or the absurdity of some story points. Ashfall copied the model of American blockbuster disaster movies like the recent San Andreas, but even more over-the-top, borderline 2012. In particular it starts with a huge destruction scene the likes of which you will not see in the next 120 minutes. It adds to it its own political context which I didn't know was allowed to be shown: the fratricide relationship with the North, the domination of American culture... The disaster story is boring (volcano with perfect timing, nuclear weapons, all on the shoulders of one guy...) so the best in this movie is in fact those political moments that make it different. It is funny that there is more criticism of the USA than of North Korea in fact, the topic of the latter being in fact carefully handled (no bad politicians or soldiers from the North, just a few people among the big empty cities). As often in Asian productions, the soldiers are dumb and unable to follow orders to the point that you wonder how they got the job (it reminded me of  Starship Troopers 5: Traitor of Mars). Brush all of that aside and what is left is the evolving relationship between the two main characters, a father-to-be which is brave but not a leader, and a spy with no attachments looking for redemption. Pretty watchable if you don't expect too much.
Rating: 4 /10