The comedy-thriller Good News, directed by Kim Sang-bum and featuring Sul Kyung-gu as the shambling fixer “Nobody,” takes apart both truth’s grammar and terrorism. More the first, than the second. It recognizes only the truth of the god of nonsense. It mocks even its own authority: The opening disclaimer states: Inspired by real event but all characters and evens portrayed are fictional. What is truth then?
“No one”, the character and the cast of the movie resemble any conventionally tight-wired protagonists. Thus, Sul Kyung-gu’s “No One” and everyone is the pivot that revolves the film chaos–or so it seems. No One steers the entropy with a shrug and a briefcase— a fixer who fixes nothing. Hong Kyung’s Seo, a young radar specialist, is put in charge of comedy. His seriousness heightens everyone else’s clumsiness
Ryoo Seung-bum portrays South Korea’s C.I.A. Director with performative menace— someone playing a blues guitar in a soundproof booth. Takayuki Yamada, the Japanese Transport Minister, defers responsibility nimbly. Like any bureaucrat, he is eternally allergic to consequences. The hijackers themselves —Show Kasamatsu’s Denji and Nairu Yamamoto’s Asuka — are over-the-top cartoons of ideological zeal. They are imbued with enough emotional violence to rock both the cockpit and the genre.
Sul Kyung-gu’s “Nobody” is the film’s anchor, if there can be such a thing in a narrative that refuses to land. He strolls through the mayhem with a shrug and a dossier, a fixer who fixes nothing. Hong Kyung’s Seo, a young radar specialist, is drafted into the farce with a level of earnestness that makes the surrounding incompetence seem all the more intentional.
The title is a sick joke—and a ritual. It is the news that never comes. The truth that never arrives. It’s the bureaucrat’s press release, the hijacker’s manifesto, the anchorwoman’s smile. It is the loneliness of a world where every message has been read, censored, or diverted.
The film’s most satisfying moments are ensemble-driven: the runway blockade, the airport camouflage, the Cold War chess game played with broken pieces. These are punchlines delivered through gestures and humor via juxtaposition. Kim Sang-bum braids these tones together tightly.
But there are times the braid frays. At almost two and a quarter hours Good News is long. At times, It strains its own sincerity. The final act goes on too long and gets tiring. The satire, once stinging, diffuses. The movie wants to be a comedy, a thriller, a political allegory and a historical meditation. It succeeds mostly. It never lies, but it never doesn’t lie either.
That is its triumph. That is its loneliness.
Grade: B+. Streaming on Netflix.
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