It sounds like North Korea is going to be the South’s NRTA.

True, but when the area you’re having tensions with is less than 100 km up the road and regularly provides reminders that it has short-range missiles aimed in your direction, it’s probably best not to stoke the fire, fictional or otherwise. Remember the cyber-chaos that North Korea caused for Sony thanks to Seth Rogen’s ‘The Interview’ in 2014?

One would think that those tensions would give ideas for more action films even if they’re more “black and white.” While I’d miss the complexity and moral ambiguities, I’d hope for something entertaining. Even if it’s just to stick it to Kim and maybe the American douchebag too.

Happy to hear you got more enjoyment out of this one that you did with ‘Secret Reunion’ Zack! I hoped ‘Confidential Assignment’ would see Hyun Bin in more action oriented roles, but for me everything he’s done since then has fell flat. From the uneven ‘The Swindlers’, to the blandness of ‘The Negotiation’, and his re-team with director Kim Sung-hoon for the uninspired ‘Rampant’. With tensions recently bubbling up again with North Korea, the South Korean film industry seems to have taken its foot off the gas with the whole North-South buddy flicks, with ‘Steel Rain’ likely to be the last one we’ll see for a while.

I did have to laugh at how often this shamelessly aped “The Man from Nowhere,” as you indicate, but that’s one of my favorite movies of all time, so who am I to complain? I was really impressed by Kong Jung-hwan as the towering Heavy, there were a couple of instances of him fighting Hyun Bin that conjured fond memories of Van Damme vs. Arnold Vosloo in “Hard Target.”