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- K-CINEMA LIBRARY
- FLU
- by Pierce Conran / Jan 06, 2020
2013 | 121 MIN | Drama, Adventure, ActionDIRECTOR KIM Sung-sooCAST JANG Hyuk, Su Ae, PARK Min-ha, YOO Hae-jin, LEE Hee-jun, Don LEERELEASE DATE August 14, 2013CONTACT CJ EntertainmentTel +82-2-371-5500Fax +82-2-371-6340Email filmsales@cj.netThe latest Korean hit in theaters, ASHFALL, is coming off its third weekend win but the film is just the latest disaster film to score big at the Korean box office. The disaster film trend in Korea kicked off with films like BONG Joon-ho’s The Host (2006) and solidified with JK YOUN’s smash hit Haeundae (2009), but it was in the summer 2012 that the genre fell into the annual rotation with the thriller Deranged, followed by that winter’s The Tower. The next summer, CJ Entertainment, the same distributor of both those films, released its influenza disaster action-drama Flu, the comeback project of director KIM Sung-soo, starring JANG Hyuk and Su Ae.When human traffickers open a container from Hong Kong to find a cargo of dead illegal immigrants, they also unknowingly expose themselves to a deadly flu virus that quickly grips the town of Bundang, an affluent satellite city to the southeast of Seoul. A day earlier, fire fighter Ji-gu (JANG Hyuk) saved doctor In-hye (Su Ae) from a car crash, who he quickly takes a shine to. When he tries to return a bag to her, he meets her daughter and before long, as chaos descends on the town, he tries to reunite the child with her mother. At the same time, the government does its best to contain any spread of the virus by locking down the city, no longer allowing anyone in or out.Flu arrived in the wake of films like Steven SODERBERGH’s Contagion, at a time when fears of a bird flu influenza were high around the world. Director KIM mixes elements of the paranoia thriller and Korean family drama, with a bit of romcom mixed in, all set against a large blockbuster-scale array of sets and effects.Director KIM was known for his late 90s youth action-dramas Beat (1997) and City of the Rising Sun (1999), as well as his period epic Musa-The Warrior (2001) and the romcom Please Teach Me English (2003), but it took him a decade to return to cinemas for his influenza thriller Flu. Director KIM’s experience shines in a film that effortlessly crafts a mounting sense of tension and chaos as a sprawling cast of colorful characters dart through intersecting narrative strands. After scoring over three million viewers with Flu, KIM took less time to return to screens once more, when he teamed up with JUNG Woo-sung again in the gritty thriller Asura: The City of Madness (2016).
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