Shiri (1999) Biography, Plot, Box office, Trailer

Shiri (1999)

Shiri is a 1999 South Korean action film, written and directed by Kang Je-gyu. Shiri was the first Hollywood-style big-budget blockbuster to be produced in the new Korean film industry (i.e. after Korea’s major economic boom in the late 1990s). Created as a deliberate homage to the “high-octane” action film made popular by Hollywood through the 1980s, it also contained a story that draws on strong Korean national sentiment to fuel its drama. Much of the film’s visual style shares that of the Asian action cinema, and particularly Hong Kong action cinema, of John Woo, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and the relentless pace of the second unit directors, like Vic Armstrong and Guy Hamilton, in the James Bond films.

The movie was released under the name Shiri outside of South Korea; in South Korea the title was spelled Swiri. The name refers to Coreoleuciscus splendidus, a fish found in Korean fresh-water streams. At one point in the film protagonist Park Mu-young has a monologue wherein he describes how the waters from both North and South Korea flow freely together, and how the fish can be found in either water without knowing to which it belongs. This ties into the film’s ambitions to be the first major-release film to directly address the still-thorny issue of Korean reunification.

Plot

In September 1992, an elite group of North Korean soldiers are put through a brutal training regime. Under the auspices of their commander, Park Mu-young (Choi Min-sik), they will be sent into South Korea as sleeper agents, to be reactivated at some later date. The most promising of the group is Lee Bang-hee, a female sniper who assassinates several key South Korean figures over the next six years. Over six years later, in September 1998, South Korea is searching for Bang-hee. The agent in charge of her case, Yu Jung-won (Han Suk-kyu) has nightmares about her murdering both him and his partner, Lee Jang-gil (Song Kang-ho).

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Jung-won is also engaged to a young woman, Lee Myung-hyun (Yunjin Kim), a former alcoholic and the owner of a fish and aquarium supply store. Myung-hyun symbolically gives Jung-won a pair of kissing gourami, a species that cannot live without its mate. Jung-won is worried that he cannot tell her about the real nature of his job due to his security clearance. Jung-won and Jang-gil are contacted by an arms dealer who claims to have information about their quarry, but he is shot dead by Bang-hee before he can give them any information. After digging a bit deeper, they determine that he had been contacted by the assassin at some point, in the effort to acquire something.

Box office

The total budget of the film was US$8.5 million, at the time the single biggest budget allocated to a South Korean film. Part of the funding was covered by the Korean electronics giant Samsung. The film was a critical and financial success in South Korea and broke box office records. Shiri was seen in South Korean cinemas by 6.9 million people, beating the previous record set by Titanic of 4.3 million. It was also successful throughout the rest of Asia (it was a top-grossing film when released in Hong Kong), and has since been issued on video worldwide. It has also played theatrically in limited engagements in the West. Film earned in worldvide $26 million.