It recreates some of the original newsreel footage from Gwangju that was smuggled out into the West, embedded into a Hollywood-style narrative based on historical characters. With Song Kang-ho, recently familiar from "Parasite".
There's a lot of Korean cinema that processes Gwangju in one form or another, but this is one of the more accessible entries, especially to an international audience.
I think it was a decent movie, except for that one... Hollywood action scene toward the end, which felt out of place and more like a "fan service."
Not depicting the same event, but if you liked A Taxi Driver, I'd also recommend 1987 - When the Day Comes which depicts people fighting against the same dictator. (Fun fact: in 1987, the role of one major character was kept secret and he's never called by his name until the end of the movie, because otherwise everybody would've recognized who he was.)
Agreed, I think the "car chase" is the part everyone feels was a bit superfluous and much like it had to tick the formulaic boxes toward the end to make box office. But if you make those concessions to form it's a picture with some great moments and definitely a story worth telling. Maybe especially for me as a German citizen, and then watching the original Tagesschau clip (the news hour the footage surfaced in) after getting home from theaters, it really resonated a lot.
1987 - I liked it, but I'd say it was more on the nose and lacks Song Kang-ho's acting chops :). Still, around the time I watched it I often worked from a café across from gates of Yonsei Univ., which figure prominently in this real-world tale so it still had an impact on me.
The other movie I really liked that's loosely connected to the era and the student uprisings was "Sunny". The comedy-drama tone of that one is a super close match to some German films processing the end of the East German regime and I felt really connected to that film.
Do you have a link to the original Tagesschau clip featuring the Gwangju footage? I could only find one from a day or two before, featuring only footage from Seoul.
My girlfriend at the time brought me to see that film, Gwangju was her home city. She was very pleased to show me after how accurate the recreation of some of the scenes were and the locations of the film.
It recreates some of the original newsreel footage from Gwangju that was smuggled out into the West, embedded into a Hollywood-style narrative based on historical characters. With Song Kang-ho, recently familiar from "Parasite".
There's a lot of Korean cinema that processes Gwangju in one form or another, but this is one of the more accessible entries, especially to an international audience.