Steel Rain 1 & 2
Steel Rain
Director: Yang Woo-seok
Year: 2017
Rating: 7.0
Country: Korea
This is a Korean version of Seven Days in May
if it had been written by Tom Clancy. Obviously, none of it is too believable,
but I wonder if North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un saw this and if
so, what he thought about it. Being the paranoid psychopath that he is, he
probably shot a few of his Generals. His father was a huge movie buff, but
I don't know if the son has taken that up. This is a political thriller with
a solid dose of action and once it gets going, it never slows down with the
tension and stakes getting larger by the minute. A little bit scary because
it always seems possible that North Korea may go nuts one of these days.
In what is perhaps a cautionary step, the filmmakers make Kim sort of the
sane one. They don't want him sending men to kill them. And his name is never
used and his face never seen. It was a little confusing initially sorting
out the characters, the plot and who was from the North and who from the
South. But eventually, I think I did.
Ri Tae-han (Kim Kap-soo) who runs the North
Korean spy agency brings Eom Chul-woo (Jung Woo-sung) out of retirement for
a secret mission. He can't trust anyone else. To kill some army plotters
who are planning a coup against the Great Leader. The first one is taken
care of in a car accident and he plans to assassinate the other at the Kaesong
Industrial Complex that is just north of the border with South Korea. The
Great leader will be there as well. Hundreds of excited young girls are brought
in to cheer him. But a stolen US military helicopter shoots a few missiles
- called Steel Rain or cluster bombs that wipes out nearly everyone. Eom
survives and with two of those young girls they are able to load the badly
wounded Leader into a van and drive into South Korea.
The North Korean conspirators send men to
kill the Leader and Eom has to protect him. This might sound like good news
to many - but the reason they are doing it is because he hasn't invaded the
south or used his nukes. It can always be worse. Meanwhile, war is declared
by the North and the South Korean President wants the USA to launch nukes
while the North is in disarray. The Chinese are in this as well. A
Global fuck up that could get out of control and destroy the world. It is
up to Eom and a South Korean official (Kwak Do-won) with the same first name
to figure out how to stop a war. The film does take a few potshots at the
North - Eom has to sternly tell his small daughter not to listen to K-Pop
or the whole family will be killed - and when the two schoolgirls eat meat
in South Korea they are delighted. Meat! But to be fair, there seem to be
sociopaths on both sides.
Steel Rain 2: The Summit
Director: Yang Woo-seok
Year: 2020
Rating: 6.0
Country: Korea
This is a sequel
of sorts to Steel Rain (2017). It is a difficult film to judge - parts of
it are great and parts of it are absolutely dreadful. But I respect a film
like this that takes chances and aims for something besides another gritty
crime or teenage romance film. In my review of the first one, I wrote that
it felt like a Korean version of Seven Days in May by way of Tom Clancy.
Well, this one too feels like Clancy is hanging all around it but this time
perhaps with The Sum of All Fears and The Hunt for Red October in mind. It
is a geo-political thriller that in truth is absolutely nuts, but rather
fun. It just needed to cut out much of a section in which the US President
is present - along with North Korea's Chairman and South Korea's President
- in a locked room where the President's fart nearly kills them. Like
I said, it is nuts and at times dreadful. But they shoot for the moon.
At the end of the first film, it seemed
like peace between North and South Korea was at hand. In this one, a meeting
to sign the treaty is going to take place. North Korea has agreed to hand
over its nukes to the USA, but at the meeting the USA President goes off
script and insults the Chairman and refuses to sign. The scriptwriters don't
do much to disguise that he is modeled on Our Supreme Leader Trump. President
Smoot (Angus Macfadyen) says to the Chairman (Yoo Yeon-seok - the King in
The Royal Tailor), "I envy you. You are a dictator. You can do anything you
want. You can drag your enemies out in the middle of the night. Have them
shot. It's a beautiful thing. We're going to make a lot of money together".
If that isn't Trump, I must be hallucinating. Just surprised he didn't suggest
that the Chairman set up a crypto scam to make billions.
They are holding this meeting in Wonsan,
North Korea and here we go again. Another coup is launched by the North Korean
army who don't want to give their nukes away and they are easily able to
capture the Chairman, the USA President and the South Korean President (Jung
Woo-sung - who played the North Korean agent in the first film). The coup's
leader is Park Jin-woo (Kwak Do-won - who was the South Korean official in
the first film) and he has some nefarious plans. As does every one else.
Try and keep up with all this. The Americans and Japanese have a plan to
attack China, the rightwing in Japan has plans to start a war between Korea
and Japan because they want to end their reliance on the USA and become an
imperial power again. The Chinese are behind the coup and ready to enter
North Korea with troops. Park takes over a North Korean nuclear submarine
with his three hostages and has plans to nuke Japan thinking that the USA
will not retaliate because they have their President.
This is in retaliation for all the ills
that Japan did to Korea in the past. To that Smoot rightfully says "Are you
crazy, half of America hates my guts. The Republicans will look the other
way and the Democrats will party". His VP is a female blonde - a Pam Bondi
type - who whispers to her advisor that it would not be such a bad thing
if he died - "It would be great for the party" and orders a missile launch
of North Korea. So, we have the USA President, the Chairman and the SK President
all locked up in a tiny room where they constantly get on each other's nerves
and the Chairman has to act as the interpreter. It feels like a bad skit
on Saturday Night Live.
This section is laughably bad and the movie
overall has way too much talk and very little action. At one point the SK
President gives Smoot a Korean history lesson - translated by the Chairman.
That goes on forever. These guys are not Harrison Ford on Air Force One -
soon to be Qatar One. None of this makes any sense in the real world but
do these big global conspiracy films ever make much sense. And it is fun
seeing this from a Korean perspective. In this one Steel Rain refers to the
name of a giant typhoon that hits when all this is going on. Because, why
not. And admittedly, I enjoyed the portrayal of Trump, Smoot I mean
as a crass, bloated, rude, boorish fool who spills national secrets like
a running faucet.
