‘Good News’ review: Byun Sung-hyun turns 1970 hijacking into satirical Netflix thriller

Dir: Byun Sung-hyun. South Korea. 2025. 135mins

A genre-mashing, tone-blending, thriller-comedy, Byun Sung-hyun’s Good News is the director’s most ambitious film to date. Split into five chapters, the picture playfully introduces us to Korean fixer Nobody (Sul Kyung-gu) via a fourth-wall-breaking narration that explains how the real life March 1970 hijacking of Japan Airlines flight 351 relates to the arrest of a Japanese Red Army Faction leader just a month later. Two weeks after the capture of the young terrorist, Nobody is tasked with stopping nine Red Army Faction Marxists from absconding with another plane to North Korea, resulting in a deeply funny and wonderfully bonkers satire. 

A biting satire about bureaucratic spinelessness

A willingness to play with form isn’t uncommon to Byun. His 2024 hitwoman action film Kill Boksoon relied on artful staging to craft balletic confrontations that seem to shatter reality. Netflix previously distributed Kill Boksoon, which premiered at Berlin, and its decision to re-team with Byun for Good News tracks for a company increasingly known for working with AAPI filmmakers like Squid Games creator Hwang Dong-hyuk and The Shadow Strays filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto. Following its Toronto premiere and Busan berth, Good News will arrive on the platform in the US on October 17 and should attract audiences hungry for manga references, over-the-top humour and high emotions. 

In Byun and Lee Jin-seong’s nimble script, a crabby older pilot complains about hemorrhoids to his young co-pilot as the pair take off from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport with 130 passengers. Once airborne, the nine hijackers who use the catchphrase “Ashita no Joe” — the name of a 1968 manga —commandeer the plane and demand to fly to North Korea. In a scene reminscent of Dr. Strangelove, Japanese officials toss around ideas to deal with the situation that will most certainly result in casualties. Their inability to step up inspires Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) head Park Sang-heyeon (Ryoo Seung-bum) to step in with the hope that succeeding here will endear the country to the Americans, and leave Japan owing them a big favor. 

To solve the crisis, he calls in Nobody. As the trickster fixer who crawls around corners with a satchel at his side, an animated Sul bobs and weaves to the film’s many drastic tonal shifts. Nobody’s harebrained scheme involves roping in the ambitious radar operator Lt. Seo Go-myung (Hong Kyung) to be a fall guy, lured with promises of promotions and medals.

Good News plays as a biting satire about bureaucratic spinelessness. The Americans, who don’t want to break international aviation laws, would rather have a foreigner like Seo pose as a North Korean air traffic controller than one of their own. The KCIA head, who hopes to dress up an airport as North Korea to trick the hijackers into believing they have made it to their destination, would rather it fall on Seo if his plans go awry. Even South Korea’s president doesn’t show up to make a big decision, wanting to to have plausible deniability.   

Byun doesn’t only aim his ire at the three countries involved, he also lampoons the Red Army Faction. The second-in-command (Nairu Yamamoto) is an impulse livewire ready to kill everyone, while their leader Denji (Show Kasamatsu) appears to barely have a handle on the situation. The group is often tricked by Seo, or can’t decide if their votes should be majority rule or not. As a unit they foster an entertaining, underhinged dynamic that matches the equally off-kilter panic happening on the ground. 

Often we leap from perspective to perspective and even into dream sequences, which are elaborately blended together by sharp sound cuts. Philosophical quotes, sometimes with uncertain origins, further destabilize viewers in a film that loves breaking reality. Through all of this, the ensemble cast give fantastic, multi-layered performances, their careful control contrasting with the exhilaratingly madcapness of the events happening around them.