The Flu

Illegal migrants have been hiding inside a container shipped from Hong Kong. When it is opened they are all dead except one. The strain of avian influenza that man carries begins spreading in Bundang, nineteen kilometres from Seoul. The district, with half a million people in it, is sealed off, and for those inside the virus stops being the main danger. Kim Sung-su wrote and directed. The sharpest thing in it is political. Neither the politicians nor the American military come off well, and it is the United States command that insists on the final solution. In one scene the Americans override the Korean president and order the destruction of one of his own cities while he sits there able to do nothing. That scene became the most discussed part of the film outside Korea. It drew 3,118,847 admissions in South Korea, took around 19.5 million dollars and finished seventeenth in the domestic box office for 2013. Who it is for: viewers who like outbreak and quarantine films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a realistic epidemic story. The second half turns from science to melodrama and runs on a mother and daughter thread.