The politics of Korea 's North/South divide has been tackled regularly within genre since the emergence of the south's new cinema and Typhoon continues that trend, albeit in the spy-thriller genre. Shiri may be cited as having got here first but in Keung-Taek Kwak's film, the inspiration is very different.

Dangerously, for a film centring on a dangerous political issue – here personified by the nuclear weapon robbing Sin (Dong-Kun Jang) and his rival in the south special ops Gang Se-Jong (Jung-Jae Lee) – Typhoon attempts to shoe-horn the debate into the very shallow and a-political form of a James Bond-styled action vehicle. The ingredients don't react as violently as you may expect, particularly with a first act as lean and well-executed as you could expect from the high-end production values but things do get messy as Typhoon approaches the mid-way point. Weighed down by an over-bearing attempt to humanise the Northern villain of the piece, Typhoon simultaneously renders its clean-cut hero a whiter-than-white poster-child for the South and robs the story of the dignity it strives for. The patronisation of the deranged and misguided villain is a sad-sight after the devotions of the script to add layers and though the climactic confrontation is epic in scope and fairly exciting in itself, it feels like a let-down after the time invested in more serious issues.

A victim of the volatile mix of genre expectation and independent thought, Typhoon – if granted a sequel – would do well to invest in a more full-figured protagonist and either let the guns or the pens blaze. As it stands, Shiri still got here first.

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