Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

67 3 Idiots
47 44 Inch Chest
82 Ajami
71 American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
73 Amreeka
75 Art of the Steal, The
43 Barefoot to Timbuktu
19 Bitch Slap
49 Blood Done Sign My Name
24 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
76 Broken Embraces
52 Celine: Through the Eyes of the World
67 Children of Invention
65 City Island
64 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
84 Cove, The
83 Crazy Heart
21 Crazy on the Outside
51 Creation
xx Daddy Long Legs
81 Damned United, The
57 Defendor
61 Delta
68 Departures
64 District 13: Ultimatum
72 Easier with Practice
85 Education, An
61 Exploding Girl, The
70 Eyes Wide Open
24 Falling Awake
81 Fish Tank
56 For My Father
52 Formosa Betrayed
xx From Mexico with Love
43 Frozen
xx Ghost Town
77 Ghost Writer, The
69 Girl on the Train, The
73 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The
47 Good Guy, The
78 Greenberg
35 Happy Tears
68 Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
20 Harlem Aria
xx Killing Jar, The
52 Killing Kasztner
xx Kimjongilia
41 Last New Yorker, The
76 Last Station, The
47 Little Traitor, The
51 Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The
71 Lourdes
73 Me and Orson Welles
77 Messenger, The
80 Mid-August Lunch
57 Missing Person, The
76 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
79 Mother
50 My Name is Khan
88 Neil Young Trunk Show
49 Nine
67 North Face
64 October Country
67 Off and Running
52 Paranoids, The
40 Phyllis and Harold
49 Pop Star on Ice
49 Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
74 Prodigal Sons
xx Promised Lands (Re-release)
89 Prophet, A
76 Red Riding Trilogy, The
63 Runaways, The
32 Saint John of Las Vegas
83 Secret of Kells, The
69 September Issue, The
36 Serious Moonlight
57 Severe Clear
63 Shinjuku Incident, The
xx Shutterbug
77 Single Man, A
76 Still Bill
34 Stolen
xx Suicide Girls Must Die!
52 Tales from the Script
74 Terribly Happy
74 That Evening Sun
47 To Die for Tano
19 To Save a Life
63 Toe to Toe
69 Town Called Panic, A
54 Until the Light Takes Us
60 Videocracy
84 Vincere
66 Waiting for Armageddon
45 White on Rice
82 White Ribbon
xx White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights, The
43 Women in Trouble
xx Word is Out
64 Yellow Handkerchief, The
64 Young Victoria, The

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Shiri

EMAILPRINTSamuel Goldwyn Films

Shiri reviews
50
9.3 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 18 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Kang Je-Gyu

Directed by: Kang Je-Gyu

Release Date:
Theatrical: February 8, 2002
DVD: April 9, 2002

Running Time: 124 minutes, Color

Origin: South Korea

Language(s): Korean (with English subtitles)

Summary

RATING: R for strong violence and some language

Starring Choi Min-sik, Han Seok-kyu, Song Kang-ho, Kim Yu-jin, and Lee Bang-hee

Spies from North and South Korea are pitted against each other amid the backdrop of reunification plans.

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

90

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

In recent years, South Korean cinema has fully flowered, producing both uncompromising highly personal films and crisp, intelligent genre movies, with Shiri the most spectacular example of the latter to date.

Read Full Review >
80

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

An oddly effective mixture of technical prowess, well-executed cliché, and unexpected political poignancy.

Read Full Review >
75

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Compelling, kinetic, fast and furious.

Read Full Review >
75

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

This is an unmistakably Asian variant on the action movie, a sleek, slick, entertaining espionage thriller in the John Woo mold.

Read Full Review >
75

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A beautifully tooled action thriller about love and terrorism.

Read Full Review >
63

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

The girl you see stabbing and shooting prisoners and fellow trainees makes the killer from "La Femme Nikita" look like a wuss.

Read Full Review >
60

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mr. Kang is a gifted choreographer of bloody chaos, but he has enough range and imagination to strew a few interludes of haunting tenderness amid the shell casings and ketchup packs.

Read Full Review >
50

TV Guide Ken Fox

The all-too-vivid simulation of terrorist attacks, including a prolonged scene of a building collapse in which people are seen plummeting to their deaths and crushed under falling concrete, may strike a very different chord with post-9/11 American audiences.

Read Full Review >
50

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The film actually gets to tackle some larger questions than one normally finds in the average fireball drama.

50

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The action looks impressive, even when nothing much is happening beyond local explosions or shattering glass, and the drama turns, affectingly, on a mysterious female sniper with a partitioned soul.

50

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Americans, for better or worse, have already seen plenty of budget-busting action flicks with half-baked political pretensions.

Read Full Review >
50

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Suffers most from being overlong.

Read Full Review >
40

Chicago Reader Ted Shen

Shamelessly derivative and politically expedient.

Read Full Review >
40

LA Weekly Paul Malcolm

Though the two-hour film can go slack with excess explication, Shiri compensates with an overheated drive that forces the myopia of current events toward a broader field of vision.

Read Full Review >
40

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Suffers from all the excesses of the genre: gunfights that go on and on and on, a plot that is almost incomprehensible.

Read Full Review >
40

Village Voice J. Hoberman

High-powered and gory.

Read Full Review >
40

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

Thankfully, the final, long action set piece, which owes a debt to "The Manchurian Candidate" among others, is free of such problems. Shiri manages to go out on its most exciting sequence. There are worse ways to go.

Read Full Review >
20

Film Threat Phil Hall

A thoroughly awful Korean production which vainly attempts to recast the slam-bang conventions of American action-adventure flicks into the sticky world of contemporary Korean politics.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Scott gave it a 10:
This was one of my favorite movies I ever saw...period. This movie came out around when Titanic came out, ie before 9/11. So it's not their fault that they have a scene like that. It only makes sense. And while Titanic's romantic tragedy was about this lowlife who shouldn't have even ended up on the ship stealing a man's wife and then dying (people should be applauding), Shiri's was just tear-jerking like none other. An excellent mix of action (quite a fan of war movies myself) as well as suspense and romance. A+

Scarlett C. gave it a 10:
It's the best Korean movie I have even seen. The gun fights and the music are fantastic. I am blown away by the romance part at the end, which I can't stop my tears. It's a both exciting and touching movie.

Evan S. gave it a 9:
This is an amazing action movie! Even American audiences will be blown away by its amazing gun fights and awesome acting. I didn't know what was going to happen by the end.

Michael F. gave it a 9:
I was blown away by this movie. I have 1 complait that is whenever there were scenes of action the camera got a bit too shaky, even though it looked good. A complicated story and constant action scenes are nicely blended in. The movie is extremely violent, but if you can take it, then rent it!!!

Jae J. gave it a 10:
i just got four word for all you movie lovers. Watch this awesome film.

Brian M. gave it a 9:
Shiri was better than I expected, this film was probably the best foreign film that I have seen, even one of the best action films I have seen.

Popular on CBS sites: College Signing Day | March Madness | TV | iPhone | Cell Phones | Video Game Reviews | Free Music

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use