Shiri

Shiri (1999)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192657/]

The Gist:
So I picked up this movie based on one of my old lectures from my world cinema class, because basically it was given credit as being the impetus of the South Korean art film movement of the last ten years (which has some amazing films under its belt like Oldboy and The Host). While I can see why it would have gotten that credit, since it was in all appearances the first big budget South Korean film really ever produced, it turns out to be a pretty poor carbon copy of a bad Hollywood thriller. I mean I liked it at first, but the twist became obvious in about the first fifteen minutes of the film and I was sitting there thinking "well of course everyone is going to know the dude's girlfriend is the killer, there's no other reason to focus on her so much and everytime the dude's around people she's trying to kill she doesn't kill him because she has grown feelings for him during her undercover whatever and so on and they're not going to play out the whole movie like we're not going to know this...are they?" To answer that question, yes, yes they did. And you know I could forgive the bad shaky cam, I can forgive the fact this bad guy should have been killed like twenty times and for whatever reason the bullets just seem to magically land errant, I can forgive the weird editing gap towards the end of the second act that completely fucks with the narrative flow and logic of the film, but having to go through the motions where the film tries to play on "who is the spy who is always one step ahead of them?" (the girlfriend) or "who is this mysterious assassin who we never show the face of" (the girlfriend) and so on is just...it's frustrating. The plot just gets more ludicrous after we "find out" the girlfriend is the assassin, but I won't bother with going into it. The point is, you've seen this movie in English and you've seen it done much better. Stay far away from this.

On Another Note:
On the off chance someone does end up seeing this, believe me if you are even a scarcely intelligent person I haven't spoiled anything. I mean it, it's that obvious.