Byun Sung-hyun’s stylish satire finds humor in history with 'Good News'
Byun Sung-hyun, one of South Korea’s most distinctive filmmakers, returns with a sharp-edged, satirical take on a real-life hijacking from the 1970s.
With the director's longtime muse Sul Kyung-gu (“The Whirlwind,” “Hyper Knife”) anchoring the film, “Good News” unfolds against a backdrop inspired by the Japan Airlines Flight 351 incident. In 1970, members of the Japanese Red Army commandeered a Boeing 727 carrying 129 people from Haneda to Fukuoka, ultimately defecting to North Korea.
Following the Netflix film's buzzy festival circuit run, the black comedy was selected for the Special Presentation section at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival and the Gala Presentation section at the 30th Busan International Film Festival.
Sul, reuniting with Byun for the fourth time, fronts the film as the enigmatic fixer Amugae, whose name is as obscure as their past. Reflecting on his ongoing creative partnership with Byun, Sul said he took on the role almost instinctively.
“Director Byun just handed it to me and said, ‘Let’s do this.’ So I said, ‘Alright.’... Honestly, I was a bit taken aback when I read the script. The character didn’t seem like someone who would exist in that era or in those scenes," Sul recalled during a press conference held in Seoul on Tuesday.
"It felt like he had just been dropped there. No matter how many times I read it, he wouldn’t blend in. ... So I said, ‘Let’s try not blending in.’ It was a strange character, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to portray him,” he added.
Byun admitted that working with Sul again came with both creative comfort and artistic pressure.
“When you work with the same actor on four consecutive projects, it inevitably gives you a lot to think about. I really started to have many thoughts. Kyung-gu and I even talked about whether it was right for us to do this together again,” he said.
After some reflection, the director said he realized he needed to break the mold he had helped create for his leading man.
“Outwardly, Kyung-gu has always appeared in a suit in my films, and even after ‘The Merciless,’ he continued to wear suits in other projects. To be honest, I started to feel a bit fed up with that image, because he’s not that kind of person at all. I wanted to draw out a different side of him, so I went back and studied some of his earlier works to research the character,” Byun added.
Despite its 1970s setting, Byun said “Good News” is very much a product of today — a reflection of the absurdities that continue to echo across decades.
“It’s a screenplay inspired by a true story that took place in the 1970s. However, it doesn’t deal with the real events in their entirety. Within that framework, I incorporated the stories I wanted to tell, stories that could still resonate in today’s world. So the characters were not based on real people, but rather reimagined,” he explained.
“Good News” premieres Friday on Netflix.
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