I have always enjoyed Asian movies, and Korea really do manage to release some really impressive titles from time to time. I hadn't really expected anything in particular from "The Flu" ("Gamgi"), and I was blown away by the intensity and gripping storyline that director Sung-su Kim managed to present here.
Where as "Outbreak" from 1995 was great and the more recent "Contagion" from 2011 failed to impress, then "The Flu" steps right up here and proves that Korea can be a force to be reckoned with in terms of pandemic and epidemic outbreak movies. And in my honest opinion, then "The Flu" surpassed "Outbreak" by far and turned out to be a much more enjoyable movie altogether.
The story starts off in Hong Kong where a group of people are illegally transported to Korea hidden in a container. Amidst the hopeful illegal immigrants is a sick individual. Upon arrival in Korea and when the container is opened, a ghastly discovery is made as the people inside are all dead. A new and high contagious and deadly virus manages to spread like a wildfire quickly bringing a whole city to its knees, forcing the Korean government to isolate and quarantine the population. Unable to find a cure to this deadly illness, time is running out and tensions within the quarantine zone are running high.
Actually there are many more layers to the storyline, but that is as an overall whole the outline of the main storyline. This is not only a movie about a pandemic outbreak, but also about the crisis of such an outbreak on governmental level, citizen level and family level. And it works out so nicely, because the directed really is skilled at what he is doing.
The movie is running high on tension and drama, which is quite nice, and it helps the movie to keep a great pace and you get attached to the characters in the movie and want to see what happens next.
A movie is nothing without a good cast, and "The Flu" really had some nice talents on the cast list. Soo Ae (playing Kim In-hae, mother of Kim Mi-reu) really filled out her role amazingly and put on a rather impressive performance. And right up there alongside her was Hyuk Jang (playing rescue worker Kang Ji-koo) with an equally convincing performance. And they had really great on-screen chemistry. However, I was especially impressed with young Min-ah Park's (playing Kim Mi-reu) performance, for a child actress, then she was amazing in her role.
There is a sense of grand scale on the movie, as you do buy into the seriousness of this outbreak that brings an entire city to its knees and threatens to sweep out to the rest of Korea. And there are many outdoors scenes in the city that really help add to this. And I will say that the camera-work and cinematography in "The Flu" was right on all throughout the movie.
"The Flu" is the type of movie that you have to watch, regardless of whether or not you like Korean movies or movies of this particular genre. It is altogether a great and high entertaining movie.
