Final Rating: 3.5/5
Good News, from South Korean director Byun Sung-hyun, dramatizes the hijacking of Japanese Air Lines Flight 351 in 1970 by the Red Army Action of the Japanese Communist League. Told from the perspective of the Korean CIA operatives tasked with intercepting the plane, the film frames the event more as a series of accidental successes than a well-executed plan. Importantly, while the film is inspired by real events, the characters and events depicted are fictional.
“Sometimes the truth lies on the far side of the moon. But that doesn’t mean what’s on the near side is fiction.”
The film begins with a quote by “Truman Shady,” a person who doesn’t exist, told by a man calling himself Nobody (Sul Kyung-gu) to Seo Go-myung, a uniquely skilled air traffic controller repeatedly overlooked by his superiors.
Good News centres the perspective of people who, to varying degrees, do not exist. Each character’s ultimate goal is to transcend that non-existence: Nobody works as a fixer for the KCIA in hopes of getting a new identity; Seo dreams of being given a medal of military merit. Even the hijackers’ goals reflect the desire for a world beyond their own, as they seek out a better life in North Korea, which they imagine as a communist utopia.
In pursuit of a better world, each character gravitates toward feeding their own egos rather than doing what’s right. As the lives of over a hundred passengers hang in the balance, the joint Korean-Japanese team tasked with stopping the hijackers is repeatedly distracted by aspirations of commendations, or currying favour with the American military, or bringing glory to South Korea in the wake of the operation’s inevitable success.
The KCIA operation depicted involved dressing up Gimpo airport in South Korea as “Pyongyang,” and directing the hijacked plane to land there instead. Meanwhile, the North Korean government also sends a team to intercept the plane, and of course they don’t have to disguise their airport.
Byun adds flair by literalizing much of the conflict between state actors. The most thrilling scene shows Seo and his North Korean counterpart hovering their fingers over a button, waiting for it to light up so they can establish communication with the hijacked plane. Starting from two dingy control rooms, the scene transitions to a western – Seo himself drawing a parallel to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – with the two air traffic controllers donning cowboy attire in a duel at high noon.
Good News shines in moments like this, where the potential for glory inflates the characters’ egos until they literally start inhabiting another world. Where it struggles somewhat is in balancing that darkly comedic tone with the seriousness of the situation.
The real stakes of the hijacking – the human lives on the line – are treated as more abstract. Of all the passengers, only a few even get lines, and only one is ever named.
Even the characters who are framed as the most righteous, the ones “doing the right thing,” have ulterior motives. Seo risks everything to save the passengers, but also because he thinks he might get a medal. The Japanese Vice Minister for Transport, who finally trades his own safety for that of the passengers, only does so after being presented with the idea that this could be a big moment for his political career.
Good News pulls off its sardonic social commentary mostly successfully, faltering only when Byun stops to remind the audience of the real events. Byun’s less interested in reality than in finding the truth in an entertainingly grim fantasy.
Thank you to Netflix for the screener.
