Movie: The President’s Last Bang
The President’s Last Bang (2005; Korean, with English subtitles) is a dramatization of the 1979 coup in South Korea that removed president Park Chung-hee from power. It is well-acted, stylish and very violent, though never unnecessarily so. I did feel that it was unnecessarily slow in a few places, and although the English subtitles on the DVD were professional and never too awkward, I am sure quite a few nuances of the script were unavoidably lost in translation. In general the movie is very entertaining, and does not require the viewer to have prior knowledge of South Korean 1970s politics to be able to appreciate its satire on political hierarchies and power struggles that subject the fate of a nation to the whims and antics of a few people. Those are, and will always remain, relevant no matter what the place or date is.
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