Steel Rain is a 2017 South Korean action thriller film directed by Yang Woo-suk, based on his webtoon of the same name.
Eom Chul-Woo, a North Korean special forces operative who has been retired for medical reasons, is approached by his former superior, Chief Director Ri Tae-han and ordered to assassinate Supreme Guard Command chief Park Byung-jin, who is plotting a Military Coup. Meanwhile across the border in South Korea another Chul-Woo (first name Kwak) works as a senior presidential secretary in the Blue House and is helping usher in a change of government. However before the term of office of the previous President ends, word arrives of an Assassination Attempt on the leader of North Korea. Fate will bring the two Chul-Woo's together as they work to avoid a second Korean War, this time involving nuclear weapons.
This movie has the following tropes:
- Assassination Attempt: North Korean commandoes seize an MLRS launcher in South Korea and fire it at a Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony where Kim Jong Un is opening a Chinese-built factory. However before rebel troops can move in and finish him off, Eom (who's there to assassinate General Byung-jin, who never shows up) throws his wounded leader into a van and takes him across the border to South Korea.
- Bait-and-Switch: The editing makes it look like Byung-jin is ordering the operation to launch the coup. What he's actually doing is activating the entire Supreme Guard Command to secure the capital and prevent the coup succeeding, which he does until Eom assassinates him.
- Bring My Red Jacket: A cluster munition airbursts above hundreds of female factory workers in red parkas waiting to greet Kim Jong Un. This allows a Gory Discretion Shot when they collapse en masse.
- Contrived Coincidence: The doctor that Eom takes his leader to turns out to be a friend of Kwak's ex-wife, who's a surgeon. Kwak however would prefer to see this as fate, arguing to Eom that he's the one person who can help him.
- Dramatic Ammo Depletion: During the hospital battle an assassin engages in a Gun Kata battle with Eom, then tries to shoot the figure lying on a hospital gurney only to find he's used his last bullet. He tries to grab a scalpel only to be tackled by Eom. But then he's able to get hold of Eom's gun and fires the last bullet into the patient...only to pull back the sheet and discover he's shot a corpse that's been left there as a decoy. South Korean special forces then burst into the room. Having failed his mission, the assassin releases the slide to make it look like the pistol is loaded and turns to face them.
- Dressing as the Enemy: North Korean special forces disguise themselves as South Korean military police and flag down a US MLRS launcher, which they then launch on North Korea as both Assassination Attempt and Pretext for War. After discovering that Number One survived and is being treated in a South Korean hospital under heavy guard, they get past the checkpoint by posing as South Korean police officers.
- Due to the Dead:
- After killing the North Korean operative in the hospital, Eom puts a coat over the man who in different circumstances would have been a fellow soldier.
- At the end of the movie, Kwak brings the gifts that Eom bought for his family to them.
- EMP:
- The North Koreans detonate a nuke over the Sea of Japan to knock out an incoming nuclear strike by US drones.
- This turned out to be the war scenario developed by the coup plotters: launch a nuclear missile to knock out South Korea's high-tech weaponry, then send in thousands of special forces to attack and seize US army bases to take their soldiers prisoner to force the United States to the bargaining table.
- Evil Versus Evil: The coup leaders argue that The Rulers of North Korea have been dragging out the stalemate on the Korean peninsula for decades and purged hundreds of loyal officers purely to maintain their own power. On the other hand, the rogue officers are willing to start a war to legitimise their own regime change.
- The Generation Gap: Eom is furious when his daughter asks him about G-Dragon, as listening to foreign music could get them all arrested. Later Kwak plays some G-Dragon and when Eom says he doesn't understand the lyrics, Kwak just laughs and says it's the same for him, but he's learned to just roll with it.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: Though not stated as such of course, but South Korea waits until the North Koreans have handed over the nuclear weapon as agreed before returning their leader.
- Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: Eom crushes the windpipe of an NK special forces soldier and leaves him for dead. Gasping for breath, the wounded man grabs a scalpel lodged in the neck of another operative, uses it to cut open an IV tube and give himself a tracheotomy, then races after Eom.
- Invisible President: Kim Jong Un is never fully shown, just a body lying on a stretcher with the camera angle obscuring his face. He's never referred to by name, just as "Great General" or "Number One". Even a statue of their Glorious Leader shown toward the end of the movie has its head cropped by the top of the movie screen.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Eom assassinates the head of the Secret Police by ramming his car off a bridge with a truck and then swimming to safety. No-one really belives it's an accident, with speculation across the border that Number One is starting another purge.
- Mutually Assured Destruction: Ironically this is the peace solution used as the end of the movie; North Korea hands over half its nukes to South Korea, so neither side can risk starting a war.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Chief Director Ri is actually the one planning a coup, and Eom assassinating the heads of the secret police and presidential guard troops is meant to clear the way. Eom achieves the first, but he misses his chance to kill Byung-jin until the latter crosses over to South Korea to negotiate a stand down from a state of war. Kwak points out to Eom that if Byung-jin has already secured the capital and nuclear arsenal in a coup, why would he risk personally crossing the border to stop a war?
- Nuke 'em: The US Secretary of State urges the South Korean president to authorize a US nuclear Decapitation Strike, arguing that a conventional war will be far more expensive in money and casualties.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: Eom has the dying leader of North Korea on his hands but doesn't trust the South Korean government, so he forces his way inside an obstetric clinic that has just closed, getting the doctor to treat his patient at gunpoint. She does her best but there's a bullet lodged in his cranium that she doesn't dare remove. "I'm an obstetrician, not a neurosurgeon. Unless there's a baby inside this belly, I can't do it." Later a woman with them gets injured in a shootout, so she takes them to her friend who's a plastic surgeon, because she at least knows surgery.
- Realpolitik: Although no-one wants a war, that doesn't mean the various foreign governments involved aren't going to try to play the situation for their long-term advantage.
- Rogue Agent: The invoked version; Chief Director Ri recruits Eom for the assassinations because he no longer works for him and can be disavowed if he fails. When Kwak proposes his plan to the President and President-Elect he also suggests that they could deny authorizing his actions, but they refuse to do so.
- Run for the Border: When the coup starts, the Chinese officials at the Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony jump in their cars and race for the border to get out of the country, using their financial and diplomatic muscle to get someone in authority to order the border guards on both sides to let them through. Eom and a couple of factory workers throw their leader in the back of a van stuffed with Chinese toy pandas and follow them all the way across, though a truckload of rebel soldiers tries to intercept them.
- Secretly Dying: Eom steals some morphine from the surgery making it look like he's an addict, but it turns out he's in constant pain from advanced cancer.
- Secret Underground Passage: A massive tunnel dug for the invasion of the South is used by the commandoes who seize the missile launcher. When Eom crosses back into his country using the same tunnel, he passes hundreds of North Korean soldiers marching in the opposite direction.
- Significant Name Overlap: Lampshaded by Kwak Chul-Woo regarding Eom Chul-Woo.
- Two-Keyed Lock: Eom removes what looks like a smart watch from Number One's wrist. When examined by South Korean intelligence, they find it's heavily encoded. Turns it's the second code generator needed to launch North Korea's nuclear arsenal, which the coup leader only finds out about after seizing the first code generator. So Ri has military hackers break the codes of the individual nukes and is able to launch one of them that way. However Eom pretends he's stolen the watch and brings it back to his superior, but it's been replaced with a Tracking Device enabling an airstrike to be called in on the Director Ri's secret bunker.
