Korean Movie Review

Train To Busan

Mi Jung and I sat down to watch the immensely popular Korean Zombie Apocalypse film by Sang-ho Yeon TRAIN TO BUSAN (Busanhaeng). Staring Yoo Gong as a fund manager who is so wrapped up in his work that he has become estranged from his family, his wife divorces him and moves to Busan and his daughter Soo-an barely gets to see him. After fubbing an attempt to show how important his daughter means to him by buying a birthday gift he had already had her grandmother purchase and present to her. Seok Woo decides at the last minute to take his daughter to see her mother in Busan ( A seaside city in the South of the Korean Peninsula.). Little do they know that Korea is about to be sieged by a mysterious viral outbreak that turns people into flesh eating zombies.

As people are being attacked on the station platform, one of the recently infected people manages to make her way onto their train. As the train attendant is trying to tend to the unconscious woman the zombie virus takes complete control and the woman attacks the train attendant. Who promptly begins to infect the other passengers. A small band of riders from all walks of Korean society manager to escape the rampaging zombies and barricade themselves in one of the first class cars. Sang Hwa (Dong-seok Ma)a blue colored worker and his pregnant wife Yu-mi Jeong (Sung Gyeong), two elderly sisters, Hong-gil (Myung-sin Park_, and In-Gil (Soo-Jung Ye), the remaining classmates from a high school software team, a homeless man (Gwi-hwa Choi), and a captain of industry Yong-Suk (eui-sun Kim) must survive long enough for the train to reach Busan, one of the last safe areas in Korea, about a 4 hour journey by the high speed KTX. However, will each persons need to survive bring the groups demise? We are presented with acts of courage, selfless sacrifice, as well as brazen acts of self-preservation and selfishness. Sometimes both being displayed by same person at different times in the movie.

I had a strange reaction to this film, I am not one for the sci-fi zombie apocalypse movie, so I was not expecting much going in. While entertaining the movie seemed to drag at times. It did not help that the movie seemed to involve so many different types of character interaction, and many different subtle plots. At the end of the movie I did not feel very satisfied and Mi Jung did not like the movie claiming that it copied from several movies, which the director openly admits to.

However, a couple days later, after seriously thinking about the films, and the very very subtle critiques of Korean society and the nuances that seemed annoying during the film started to make sense. I also had an eye opening epiphany of how the director pulled the audience into the final sequence of the film ( I will give spoilers here, but if you want to read what I discovered on reflection, click on the forum link at the bottom of the post).

The cinematrography was top notch, and there were some very suspenseful scenes, the acting was great and the chemistry between Seok Woo, and Sang Hwa’s characters was believable, and it was easy to imagine their families all going out for soju years after the ordeal.

Train TO Busan hold a rating of 93% on rotten tomatoes, and 73 on Metacritic.

If you are interested in a good action/thriller then I do recommend you giving this film a try. After watching it please stop by the Forums and let me know what you thought of the film.

The film is currently available free of charge with the Amazon video app.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Movie-Star-Train/dp/B01LXJE72L/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1474787645&sr=8-5&keywords=train+to+busan

Forum link: www.catracing.org/hendrb/forum

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