Steel Rain 2: Summit, written and directed by Yang Woo-suk. Starring Jung Woo-sung and Kwak Do-won. South Korea, 132 minutes, IIB. Opens Sept 24. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Steel Rain 2: Summit has absolutely nothing to do with 2017’s Steel Rain. It’s a sequel in creative spirit only, reuniting writer-director Yang Woo-suk and his leading men, Korean-wave star Jung Woo-sung and perpetual scene-stealer Kwak Do-won, who also co-starred in Yang’s breakout feature The Attorney. In the first film, Jung played a North Korean special-forces type and Kwak a high-ranking South Korean bureaucrat who got mixed up in a (ridiculously complex) coup attempt in Pyongyang. 

A healthy dose of the regional geopolitical dynamics that laced the earlier film is here again. Jung and Kwak swap border sides, and Yang throws a new character into the mix in the form of the US president, a less than subtle comic riff on the current POTUS, confirming the side-eye Donald Trump gets from nearly every corner of the globe.

The tonally disjointed Summit starts its cleanly cleaved three acts hopscotching around East Asia as the North again plots a coup, a shadowy right-wing Japanese faction plots re-invasion of the Korean peninsula, China bristles at the South participating in a military exercise, and the US threatens cancellation of peace talks between North and South. The film uses very sensitive, and very real, global relations as a framework for a standard action film. That’s about as analytical as expected, but Yang isn’t really interested in the real world — evident as soon as act two starts. 

(PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Things settle down after a litany of job titles crowd the screen for 20 minutes and thoroughly confuse viewers with a string of names. While attending a summit in Wonsan, South Korean President Han Kyeong-jae (Jung), North Korean Chairman Jo Seon-sa (Yoo Yeon-seok, Hospital Playlist) and US President Willis Smoot (Angus Macfadyen, still best known for Braveheart) are kidnapped by Supreme Guard Commander (Kwak) and taken aboard a North Korean nuclear sub, to be held hostage until the coup is carried out. They’re locked in a stateroom together.

The comic back-and-forth among the three leaders forms the basis of the second act, with Macfadyen absolutely thieving the film with his gloriously outsized, blustery performance as an outsized, blustery president. There are no attempts to hide the Trump impression, and the film is funnier for it. The shared eye rolls, ego stroking and baffled expressions from Han and Jo — and full credit to Jung and Yoo for pitch-perfect straight-man reactions — at Smoot’s utter ignorance of the world beyond his doughnuts and cheeseburgers is worth the price of admission. Their sequences turn into a pseudo-three-hander that could easily have been its own film.

The last act revolves around the inevitable conscience-based, bloody mutiny, led by former submarine commander Jang Ki-sok (Shin Jung-geun), who was disgraced and demoted for refusing to carry out what he considered illegal orders. Summit finishes off as a standard submarine thriller — bursting pipes, tense pings, drastic diving/surfacing — and though it has its share of exciting seabed chases nothing matches the gonzo middle section and Macfadyen’s unhinged, gleeful performance. A rare 2020 delight.