A lot of people complain about movie violence and, well, I agree. They're absolutely right. But not for the right reasons.

Movie violence is bad because it's too mild.

I'm not talking about the over-the-top gore of horror films. They're fantasy, therefore supposed to be ooky. When I walk the streets at night, I'm not worried about zombies coming out of nowhere to gnaw at my intestines. What I fear is a real-life weapon. Actually I don't fear the gun itself, for guns alone don't kill. I fear the stupid muddha behind the trigger, 'cause he probably doesn't know how much power he's holding.

On "realistic" movies about cops and robbers, guns do very little. A hole in the shirt, fake blood squirting from a concelaled condom, and that's all. People get snuffed in slow-motion, when in real life they piss and shit themselves while dying. And sometimes death is extremely slow. When one gets shot in the gut, he can take up to 10 HOURS to die. But movie guns? Feh. Small potatoes. Do you really think that the good cop can be shot with a Magnum .44., a hand-cannon that packs so much heat it can rip your arm clean off the elbow, and get away with just a FLESH WOUND? C'mon!

If we really want to put a stop on real-life violence, a good start would be to show the REAL consequences of gunning down someone. So your kid thinks that holding a guy sideways is cool? Aww, cutey. Show him how the exit wound of a .38 really looks like and kiddo won't even touch a slingshot anymore, unless he's born with psychopathic tendencies.

Take, for example, the scene from Shiri where a cop is shot on the kneecap with a high-powered weapon. If this were an Ah-nuld flick, the shootee would reappear hours later with a bandage and a mild limp. In Shiri, the leg of the cop does what any self-respecting leg would after being shot square on the kneecap: it falls off the socket and paints the wall with blood sprays. Yeah, ouch. Welcome to the real world, buddy!

Alas, the success of Shiri comes from the fact that its heart is based on the very real situation on the divided Koreas. Teleport City's Keith Allison did a great job depicting the movie's political backstory on a wondeful, if spoiler-ridden review at Teleport City, so I won't tell it all over again.

If something must be said about Shiri it's that, even if it makes a lot of concessions to the American action formula (people being saved at the nick of time being the most usual sin), you're never sure who to root for. In one side, we have top markswoman Hee (played by different actresses, and telling more than that may spoil one of the surprises) and the leader of the terrorists, Park (Choi Min-Sik). On the other side, we have the agents of South Korea's anti-terrorist force, Ryu (Han Suk-Kyu) and Lee (Song Kang-Ho). Technically, Hee and Park are the villains. But that's not as easy is seems, as the lines of right and wrong (I'm not talking good and evil here) are extremely blurred.

Lee and Ryu live in the prosperous South Korea, where they have McDonald's, Coca Cola and a decorative fish in every office (pay attention to the fish motif, it's an important part of the mystery; even the Shiri of the title is a fish). Their mission is to maintain the status quo as it is, with each Korea minding its own beeswax. But Park is from North Korea, where starving families feed on the corpses of their dead children, so he's more than right when he says he want a revolution.

The terrorists want the unification of the Koreas. To achieve that, they must PREVENT the unification. Confused? Actually, it makes sense. The unification is at the hands of greedy politicians, who are stalling the process by spending more time (and the contributor's money) making diplomatic visits to each other, sipping Champagne and eating belugas while their people die. Case in point: their great idea to kickstart the unification is thru a soccer match. SOCCER, dammit! As brazilian chronist Nelson Rodrigues once said, "soccer is the opium of the multitudes". So true. Politicians are merely giving bread and circus to the people instead of actually doing something to feed the hungry. So, Park's plan is pretty simple: he's going to blow up the stadium where all presidents and ministers are gathered, and reboot the unification with a good old revolution, this time without leechy leaders on the way to throw spanners in the works. Yes, if Park succeeds, a lot of innocents will die. That makes it hard to support his methods, cause killing people is wrong, always was and always will be. But what hurts us more is knowing that his act could actually solve North Korea's problems once and for all.

There's something really wrong with the world when we can see the logic behind terrorism and mass murder. We're living in sad times. Very sad, indeed.

Oh. I was almost forgetting the technical mumbo jumbo that's a pre-requisite in the anal-retentive reviews we find all over the Net. Well, I'm not the kind of nerd who keeps looking at dark areas for offending loose pixels, so let's keep the things direct and manly. How does the film look? As gorgeous as Natalie Portman wearing a G-string made of 100 dollar bills! How does the audio seeps thru your ears? Like crap thru a goose! There - satisfied now?