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‘12.12: The Day’ Review: South Korea’s Oscar Submission Is an Exciting Political Thriller About the Nation’s 1979 Coup d’Etat
'12.12: The Day,' a box office hit in South Korea and its Oscar submission for international feature, recreates the country's 1979 coup d'etat.
Kim’s film opens in high gear, with Chun sensing his chance to exploit a temporary power vacuum, and then never lets up as his band of cronies facilitate the plan with bribery, intimidation and the murder of fellow soldiers. Letting all his flamboyant acting chops loose without ever tipping into hamminess, Hwang is dynamite as a monstrous character whose combination of charisma, swaggering arrogance and sewer rat cunning inspires equal measures of fear and fealty among co-conspirators. The importance of age as a powerful marker of authority — a principle that derives from the influence of Confucianism in Korean society — is vividly on display as junior officers and rank-and-file soldiers are caught, sometimes tragically, between these concepts and their duty to the nation.
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