Nice scenario, about spying and relationship between South and North Korea. Not a spy movie though, human-oriented instead.Not really exciting compared to other South Korean masterpieces. But entertaining and appealing.

Secret Reunion is a reminder that geographic distance alone is never a cultural barrier. One could even get away with calling this spy/thriller/buddy with a dash of comedy formulaic. Maybe it is. I might just be fooled by the foreign language, but Secret Reunion Is not just familiar, but fresh. The film hinges on the relationship between two opposing intelligence agents. Both have been abandoned by country and separated from family. Kang-ho Song plays the damaged bumbling South Korean field agent. I enjoyed his performance more than anything in this film. I cannot logically justify this, but this is the third film were he felt like a Korean Humphrey Boggart. Yes this is crazy, but how could I better articulate this man's natural charisma? Dong-won Kang has a tougher roll as the desperate emotional despondent North Korean operative. His character was just written uninteresting, but he holds his own while interacting Song. Perhaps a weakness of the film is that I enjoy it when these two simply coexisting more than when they are chasing each other. I guess something has to justify the action sequences. Nothing surprising here, except possibly the institution of foreign brides to western audiences. A sociologist might find its portrayal interesting, I just enjoyed how it forced Song to reach for moral justifications. Otherwise, the story is cookie cutter and wraps up so unrealistically clean you would think Reunion briefly teleported to Hollywood. But hey, Casablanca was made by recipe, so I can give this movie half a pass. It is hard to completely recommend a benign spy film. I think those who have previously other Korean smash hits will dig Secret Reunion. Song's performance provides just enough to outshine the truly mediocre. Just please don't ignore this endorsement because of the insane Boggart comparison.

Another very good Korean production, this time a spy thriller. Frankly, my biggest problem with this movie was a technical one--it streamed in a jerky, stuttering fashion the whole way through. I have never had this happen before, and have no idea what the problem was. After a while you kind of adjusted to it, although it remained distracting throughout. Also, sometimes the subtitles were cut-off at the bottom of the screen, which was very annoying. Once again, the modern Korean movie industry has far outdone nearly any current American production in terms of intelligence of the script. This particular film didn't have much of the fast-moving action typical of Asian movies dealing with this kind of material, which didn't bother me at all since the plot had a lot of depth and twists to maintain interest; however, there was not much of the wit and humor I have also come to expect from Korean movies, which was a big disappointment for me, and the primary reason I'm dropping it's rating a little bit. It was very interesting to see a film dealing with the North/South Korean split from the point of view of Koreans and not our straightforward American perspective, although North Korea still hardly comes off well. (I guess there's only so much you can do with pure evil.) The situations and emotions just feel so much more morally complex and real than those found in pretty much any American movie nowadays. So, in conclusion, while lacking in the action and comedy that I have come to expect from the best of Korean cinema, "The Secret Reunion" is still much better than just about anything our fat and lazy film industry puts out nowadays. It seems like today, you really have to go foreign to get the good stuff.

I watched this film in theaters at AMC with some of my relatives, and I must say it was pretty entertaining. Now did it beat my expectations? That I would have to say no, but I still enjoyed this film and was worth watching it on the big screen. I don't really like the actor Kang-ho Song he seems to play the same obnoxious and very uncool character in just about every movie he is in so far but I must say he fit right in with his character. He plays a agent of the National Intelligence Service. Kang Dong-won did a alright job playing the North Korean spy although he was more of a way to get younger teens to go watch the movie. Lot of the entertainment comes from both character acting all buddy buddy at first just so they can dig at one another for information, and also enjoyed there awkward bonding later on. This isn't one of those groundbreaking movies from Korea or anything, but it was well worth the time to watch.7.8/10