Filming in the same location as Black Hawk Down, this movie covers approximately the same events just at the onset of the civil war, but in this case, it mostly necessitates what I would like to perceive as a trope in South Korean cinema. The trope being that in the portrayal of both North and South officials, you need to keep a balanced and semi-objective characterization of the sides and lean in on the simple platitude that despite the fact that they live under polar opposite regimes, they are still Korean, and compassion must persevere.
The movie itself takes a little bit too long to get to its Argo-like premise as the plot hops through the events and is filled with the usual tonally miss-matched comedy, where people scream at each other in that haughty way that only the Korean language can allow. The director claims that in the initial script it was much worse, and I'm inclined to believe him.
Despite a few visual annoyances like those completely pointless yet jarring CGI dogs, the anticipated collapse of all and any safeguard for the diplomats has many superb sequences, and the final chase through the streets in cars with makeshift protection is tense and clearly had a lot of effort put into it. The overall use of Morocco pretending to be Somali should also be commended. Unfortunately, I do not feel all that can save a very simple script with characters that don't go beyond archetypes to serve the upper-mentioned trope.
The movie itself takes a little bit too long to get to its Argo-like premise as the plot hops through the events and is filled with the usual tonally miss-matched comedy, where people scream at each other in that haughty way that only the Korean language can allow. The director claims that in the initial script it was much worse, and I'm inclined to believe him.
Despite a few visual annoyances like those completely pointless yet jarring CGI dogs, the anticipated collapse of all and any safeguard for the diplomats has many superb sequences, and the final chase through the streets in cars with makeshift protection is tense and clearly had a lot of effort put into it. The overall use of Morocco pretending to be Somali should also be commended. Unfortunately, I do not feel all that can save a very simple script with characters that don't go beyond archetypes to serve the upper-mentioned trope.