Swiri
Samuel Goldwyn Films | Release Date: February 8, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
50
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
11
Negative:
1

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Los Angeles TimesKevin 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 A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
An oddly effective mixture of technical prowess, well-executed cliché, and unexpected political poignancy. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Compelling, kinetic, fast and furious. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A beautifully tooled action thriller about love and terrorism. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean 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
63
New York PostJonathan 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 TimesDana 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
Wall Street JournalJoe 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 NewsElizabeth 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 ChronicleCarla Meyer
Suffers most from being overlong. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
The film actually gets to tackle some larger questions than one normally finds in the average fireball drama.
50
TV Guide MagazineKen 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
40
L.A. WeeklyPaul 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
Chicago ReaderTed Shen
Shamelessly derivative and politically expedient. Read full review
40
Washington PostStephen 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 VoiceJ. 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 ThreatPhil 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
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