One of the darkest chapters in South Korean history is chronicled in “12.12: The Day,” a riveting account of the coup d’état of the 1979 coup d’état that followed the Oct. 26 assassination of authoritarian president Park Chung-hee. Meticulously written and very well-performed by a top-notch cast including Hwang Jung-min (“Deliver Us From Evil”), the first feature from director and co-writer Kim Sung-su since 2016 is an exciting and highly suspenseful political action-thriller that ventures where no South Korean feature has gone before. This forensic examination of events that dashed hopes of democratic reform and plunged the nation into eight more years of severe military rule was a smash
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