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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Flu

FLU (Kim Sung-su). 122 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (September 6). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN


In the much stronger first half of Kim Sung-su’s Korean blockbuster Flu, a shipping container filled with illegal immigrants proves the perfect breeding ground for a mutated version of bird flu that spreads like wildfire through the Seoul suburb of Bundang.

Among the one-dimensional types caught up in the ensuing panic are a virologist (Su Ae) and a first responder (Jang Hyuk) who’d met earlier when he pulled her from the wreckage of her car. He ripped her skirt, so she hates him it’s that kind of movie. Also, she has a young daughter (Park Min-ha) whom the movie insists is adorable.

Until everyone winds up in a military quarantine camp, Flu moves quickly enough to gloss over the sketchy characterizations and increasingly improbable coincidences that keep bringing people together. But by the second half, the movie reduces itself to our heroes ducking in and out of plastic tents while politicians yell at each other about responsibility in one of those big shiny war rooms.

Kim manages to produce a couple of chilling images, but he’s much more interested in manufacturing cheesy emotional beats for an audience that’ll swallow anything.

It starts out as Contagion but winds up as Outbreak.

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