YMMV / Shiri

• Faux Symbolism: The entire movie can be taken as a symbolic gesture for Korean unification, which is not happening for North Korea's continued aggression towards the south, which includes artillery bombings and the occasional gunfight in the DMZ. As of January 2024, Kim Jong-un made a speech that states his acknowledgement that unification with the South is an impossible task.
• Genre Turning Point: With the global acclaim later Korean films gained through drama and character-driven pieces, it's easy to forget how Shiri, an action film, was transformative to the Korean movie industry. Prior to this, Korean movies were mainly low-budget affairs shot on cheap film stock with scratchy voice tracks and over-emphasized foley effects while screened in small, independent cinemas on canisters that quickly degraded. Shiri, on the other hand, had a relatively huge budget that allowed it to feature cleaner image quality and clearer audio, an example every Korean feature since followed. The sheer popularity, meanwhile, led to the construction of thousands of large, high-quality cinemas that feature lots of luxuries for viewers.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Han Suk-kyu and Choi Min-sik have known each other for a long time and are on good terms with each other. So to those who don't know this, it may be a bit funny for them to see them play antagonists in a few movies where they get the leading roles, including Shiri.
• Retroactive Recognition: The movie made Han Suk-kyu, Song Kang-ho, Choi Min-sik and Yunjin Kim notable movie and television actors in and out of Korea. Moreso for Ms. Kim since she made her appearance later on in LOST and in the American version of "The Mistresses".

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