Thanks to soccer..
Shiri manages to be during its last half an hour a little bit more than an ordinary action blockbuster. Before, it was action without emotion, the use of documentary like cameras not as brilliant as in a Fukasaku movie, a too confuse editing, a horrible Hans Zimmer-like score, an everything but subtle vision of the conflict between North and South Korea. Okay, the romance as a reflect of a nation's tragedy is a little bit showing itself during the second part but there's still not enough melodrama to make it watcheable. But the end... It is as powerful in dramatic intensity as a John Woo movie, tragic sad and ends with the kinda slow song we like to like to hear in a Hero Movie. But the movie is worth seeing as a symbol of the limits of the Korean cinematographic industry: it borrows some elements from HK and japanese cinema -here the mix between action and melodrama and a violence more graphic than in US movies-, from Hollywood -a technical level higher than in HK and Japan, the rythm, formal elements owing to Mac Tiernan, Cameron or Bruckheimer- to fill the gap created by the fall of the HK cinematographic industry -and Shiri was hailed as an event at the time by HK movie fans lacking of action movies since the departure of Jet Li and co to Hollywood- but never manages to create its own style.
