The Flu (2013)

How sad is this?

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

When an illegal Chinese immigrant infected with a deadly H5N1 variant arrives in South Korea, officials quickly lose control of the situation. As the death toll reaches hundreds of thousands, it becomes clear that the world's supply of yellow people is under serious threat.Can South Korea contain the infection, or will it spread to the other yellow people nations? How can the West sustain its economic model if we run out of yellow people to make stuff? Can the yellow people save themselves, or will the West need to intervene? With the virus now airborne, how many normal people will need to be sacrificed in our efforts to save the yellow people?These and other vital questions are tackled with unflinching realism in this gripping thriller!I rate Gamgi at 23.31 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a surprisingly decent 7/10 on IMDb.

This is the triumphant story of how one single mother was able to care more for saving her daughter than her country, or the World for that matter, despite her profession as epidemiologist. Overall a decent watch, but while the little kid is cute as hell she gets annoying way too quickly. It's basically all about the mother feeling bad for emotionally neglecting her daughter, then an outbreak happens, and she spends the rest of the movie trying to save her. At one point she even has the cure in her hand and is ready to throw away millions of lives just to find out where some medical staff took her daughter. The emotions are so simplistic and cliché it's a bit insulting to the characters that the actors are portraying. Don't expect this film to blow your mind, and if it does you maybe want to pay a little more attention to expanding your mind.

Honestly, The Best Korean Sci-fi Action/Drama movie ever.. in fact, it's the best Pandemic-kind of movie around. i thought it will be just a standard pandemic-kind of movie, like what several Europe countries production has made, but it all changed when the virus starts to spread around the city, it was so intense... but the most important thing this movie has achieved is that they successfully bound you emotionally to the characters from the beginning, so even in the most tense scenes, you will still watch not only with excitement, but with passion too, wanting to know more about what happened to every one. What will the government do?, what have become of them?, what is their fate?..The action was intense, while the drama was so touching and bonding us with it.. in my opinion,this is even better than World War-Z, totally worth the 120+- minutes!

I'm generally a fan of Korean movies but this one is terrible. The exposition is a parade of clichés. The quirky buddies meet the feisty but sexy lady (who has a cute daughter). Then everyone in Bundang, a satellite city of Seoul, gets the flu and starts dying. Of course this is a rip-off of every Quarantine/Contagion movie you've ever seen but it's got none of the character/plot or budget to pull it off. The director is from the A.D.D. school of direction and although Jang Hyuk does good work as the fireman it's wasted. None of the actors embarrass themselves here to be fair. But there's no time for character development which is problematic as the movie has no plot instead relying on personal drama to carry the day. Sure an advanced ability to suspend disbelief is often a necessity in Korean movies but the idea that a virus could be contained in Bundang is just plain silly. About the only thing that amused me in this movie was the undercurrent of xenophobia. Of course Vietnamese workers are the source of the deadly virus (the Vietnamese provide a growing emigrant workforce as well as mail order brides in Korea) and the scene where the "good" Korean President threatens to shoot down the "bad" American jet bombers (ordered to bomb a mob threatening to break the quarantine cordon)doesn't say much for a generation that prefer to ignore how the Korean War was won. In a country where few will have seen Contagion and xenophobia is considered a virtue it's hardly surprising this movie has found popularity but for a foreign audience this movie is best avoided.