BIFF 'Good News' movie review: Hilarious Korean farce based on a real-life hijacking

A still from "Good News" / Netflix

"Good News" is the new film from Byun Sung-hyun, director of "The Merciless" and "Kill Boksoon," and opens with the caption: "Inspired by true events, but all characters and events portrayed are fictional," before asking "What is the truth then?"

The event in question is the March 1970 hijacking of Japan Airlines flight 351 by members of the Red Army Faction of the Japan Communist League. What unfolds is a riotously entertaining black comedy about the nature of truth, the power of propaganda and the delicate intricacies of international cooperation.

Featuring an all-star cast that includes Sol Kyung-gu, Hong Kyung, Ryoo Seung-bum and Takayuki Yamada, "Good News," which just premiered at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, stays closer to how the events actually played out than its opening statement might suggest.

After seizing control of the aircraft in Japan, the hijackers, led by Denji (Show Kasamatsu), demand to be flown to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where they hope to receive political asylum.

When the plane enters South Korean airspace, however, an international crisis team of politicians, military personnel and advisers from Japan, Korea and the United States concocts an elaborate ruse to deceive the terrorists by disguising Gimpo International Airport in Seoul to look like Pyongyang and directing the plane to land there instead.

From the outset, Byun's film evokes the anarchic energy of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic wartime satire "Dr. Strangelove," with its larger-than-life characterisations and frenetic pacing.

Ben Affleck's Academy Award-winning "Argo" and the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading" also spring to mind during this farcical spin on an event that, in reality, probably played out with nail-biting intensity.

Takayuki Yamada in a still from "Good News" / Netflix

Ryoo is on wonderfully over-the-top form as the mustachioed head of South Korea's intelligence services, while Hong's air force officer finds himself at the center of the negotiations thanks to his fluent linguistic skills.

This Hail Mary attempt to hoodwink the terrorists is the brainchild of Sol's shadowy adviser. A dishevelled outsider known only as Nobody, he has a unique understanding of the Red Army Faction as well as North Korea, prompting a frenzy of rumours to circulate about his true origins and motives.

"Good News" is also the latest in a string of recent Korean films located in and around aircraft, following in the jet stream of "Hijack 1971" and "Emergency Declaration," to name two.

What sets Byun's film apart, however, is its whip-smart script that imbues a potential tragedy with deftly judged humour, while championing the often complex art of political diplomacy.

Hong Kyung in a still from "Good News" / Netflix

"Good News" will start streaming on Netflix on October 17.

Read the article at SCMP.