Directed by Byun Sung-hyun Written by Byun Sung-hyun and Lee Jin-seong
Production company Star Platinum
Rating: ★★★★★

Who can resist a magisterial black comedy?
I cannot. Sharp, hilarious, and surprisingly deep, Good News is one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in a while. I laughed constantly throughout, yet the pacing unfolds with such quiet mastery that I forgot the film runs over two hours long.

This is a gem: energetic, twisty, and brimming with killer ensemble performances. Hong Kyung, whom I have followed since Revenant, proves absolutely phenomenal here. He brings nuance and charisma to his role, anchoring the chaos with a presence that feels both compelling and unexpectedly tender, like a hand steady on a trembling shoulder. The hijackers’ manga-quoting chaos alone merits the price of admission. The genre-mashing spirit keeps everything fresh and unpredictable. Ambitious and incisive, the film skewers bureaucratic incompetence with gleeful precision, transforming a high-stakes crisis into a slapstick farce. Ego-driven officials focus more on dodging blame than solving problems, turning multinational diplomacy into a chaotic game of hot potato.

What strikes me most is how the film lays bare the hilarious and horrifying human flaws woven into power structures. Politicians, spies, and diplomats emerge as hapless as the “terrorists” they confront. Incompetence, it turns out, becomes the great equalizer, a thread that binds us all in our shared frailty. The movie does not shy from geopolitical complexity either, particularly the fraught Korean-Japanese relations, which lend a layer of sharp commentary that settles close to the bone, stirring memories of old wounds dressed as fresh news.

Beneath the laughter pulses a deeper question: Who controls the story? History refuses black and white. It unfolds as a farce, shaped by those in power, and the film gently urges us to question the official accounts of “good news” in global events. Even the darkest standoffs can dissolve into unexpected levity when everyone involved stumbles, caught in the quiet absurdity of their own making.

In the end, this is a sharp, darkly funny takedown of authoritarian foolishness, mixing thrills and laughs in a way that feels surprisingly vital.
Enjoy the ride.

Image courtesy of Netflix