Good News

With its dizzying twists, bursts of mayhem, and teeming ensemble of colourful characters, this wickedly satirical geopolitical thriller from South Korean writer-director Byun Sung-hyun (Kill Boksoon) takes us aboard a hijacked plane that several nations will do anything to bring down to Earth.

It is 1970. Shortly after departing Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, a commercial aircraft bound for Itazuke is taken over by members of the Red Army Faction, armed with pistols and blades and demanding that the flight be rerouted to Pyongyang. The fact that Japan and North Korea share no infrastructure to facilitate such a landing is only one among a rapidly growing list of kinks in the zealous hijackers’ plan.

Meanwhile, in Seoul, a mysterious figure known only as “Nobody” (Byun regular collaborator Sul Kyung-gu) — a man whose work turns up on the nightly news but whose name is never uttered — is called in to advise on a secret intervention. Intelligence and military agencies from Japan, South Korea, and the US deploy several strategies, from double parking on the runway during refuelling to attempting to hijack a radio signal. They might just bring the hostages to safety — if they don’t create an even bigger disaster with their insane shenanigans.

Shock cuts, fantasy sequences, flashbacks, abrupt musical intrusions, unnerving close-ups: Byun pulls out every device in his filmmaking arsenal to ensure that Good News is a bumpy, fiendishly entertaining ride through unfriendly skies. Buckle up.

GIOVANNA FULVI