“The Flu” Korean Theatrical Poster
Director: Kim Sung-Soo
Cast: Jang Hyuk, Soo Ae, Park Min-ha, Yoo Hae-jin, Ma Dong-seok, Lee Hee-joon, Kim Ki-hyeon
Running Time: 121 min.
By Kyle Warner
Films about deadly outbreaks are cinema’s new favorite kind of disaster movie. I guess it’s easy to understand why. Movies about floods and tsunamis remind us too much of the recent disasters in New Orleans and Japan. Earthquakes make for grim stories, not blockbuster entertainment, and there’s only so much you can do with a tornado movie. The outbreak sub-genre allows filmmakers to have fun with the ‘what if’ of the disaster movie again, because we’ve yet to see such horrifying scenarios play out on a truly massive scale. Similar to how we made films about the horrors of radiation in the 1950’s, we now seem obsessed with the concept of annihilation via infectious disease…
The latest film to play with our fears of ‘what if’ is Sung-su Kim’s The Flu. It begins when a shipping crate of illegal immigrants is brought into South Korea. At the beginning of the trip, somebody inside the crate has a cough. By the time the crate finally arrives at its destination, everyone inside is dead with the exception of patient zero. It’s not long before the infected man is loose in the city of Bundang, unknowingly spreading a deadly virus to all those he comes in contact with.
At the center of the story are two heroes, a rescue worker named Ji-goo (Hyuk Jang) and a doctor named In-hae (Soo Ae). Before the virus becomes an epidemic, we are treated to one of the most awkward and unnecessary romances in recent memory, as Ji-goo saves In-hae in one of the opening scenes and then tries to woo her despite the total lack of chemistry shared between them. The first twenty minutes play out like a romantic comedy with a bird flu subplot. It’s awful.
So, it’s almost a relief when panic takes over the city and people start vomiting blood in the streets.
The Flu is at its best during its darkest moments. Scenes of mass hysteria are well done and the many extras in the film give it an epic scope. Soon the government starts rounding up the citizens of Bundang and sending them to camps where they will be tested and studied. Moments where the citizens are forced to strip and march towards a dark unknown are truly unnerving, bringing to mind images of the Holocaust. Rumors begin circulating throughout the camp that the infected are being executed. The truth is far worse, however… The film’s cinematographer Mo-gae Lee (I Saw the Devil) is one of the best in the business and he captures some great visuals in these dark moments of the film.
On the outside looking in is the President of South Korea (In-pyo Cha). Constantly aware that the world is watching his every move, the President vows to help the people of Bundang, but it won’t be an easy task. Making his job even harder are the bickering bureaucrats who seem too worried about their own jobs and the American experts from the CDC who are concerned about the virus going global. It’s nothing new but it works to up the suspense.
It’s too bad that director Sung-su Kim and co-writer Yeong-jong Lee seem not to trust their own dark vision. They overpopulate the film with melodrama, romances that the viewer never buys into, and stupid character choices that had me pulling my hair out. Thankfully the comic elements of the film fade into memory (indeed, the first twenty minutes feel like an entirely different film by the time the end credits roll), but we’re still forced to sit through a dull romance between our two leads.
Undoubtedly the roles should have been written differently and the romance should have been put in the background where it belonged—but the two leads don’t help matters much by delivering some uninspired performances. Hyuk Jang does an all right job playing the hero, but besides being a nice guy, there’s not much to him. It’s also difficult to understand just why he’s so smitten with Soo Ae’s doctor. Soo Ae’s performance is difficult to like from the start, coming across as pushy and snobby. Making matters worse is that her character makes some truly stupid and selfish decisions later on. The film needed me to like her for me to accept her questionable choices. I didn’t, so I don’t.
Child actress Min-ha Park puts the two leads to shame with her role as Soo Ae’s daughter. Her performance shows off a wide range of emotions and she easily takes command of nearly every scene she’s in.
This is director Sung-su Kim’s first time behind the camera since 2003’s romantic comedy Please Teach Me English. In 2001 he directed Musa the Warrior, one of the best historical action films to come out of Korea in the past fifteen years. He’s a good director, but with The Flu I can sort of sense him second-guessing himself. Underneath it all, there is a lean, mean disaster thriller here—but maybe he felt that wasn’t enough to get people in the theatre. Overcrowding the film with a bad romance and some soap opera melodrama almost kills the movie. But thankfully the good stuff outweighs the bad. Anyway, here’s hoping that Kim doesn’t take so long before making his next film.
The Flu is not the finest example of the genre, but it’s far from being the worst. If you can ignore the things it does wrong, then you may enjoy it for the many more things it does right.
Kyle Warner’s Rating: 6/10
