By SETH HYNES
THE Interview, a comedy about two media personalities (James Franco and Seth Rogen) who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has had quite a bumpy history.
After a swarm of controversy, including the Sony hacks, terrorism scares, threats of war, Sony cancelling the film’s release and then hastily backtracking, The Interview finally comes out – and it’s actually kind of great.
The film has the crude humour you expect from Franco and Rogen’s work, but kept to a minimum.
Instead, we get a lot of amusement from their odd-couple friendship, and in the middle act The Interview essentially becomes a surreal buddy picture between Dave (Franco) and Kim (Randall Park).
Some people criticised The Interview for humanising Kim Jong Un – he’s a crazy despot who’s also a Katy Perry fan with an inferiority complex – but I support this approach.
Park is mercurial and compelling as Kim, and it’s empowering to be able to laugh at evil.
The Interview is funny, well-produced, fairly tense and surprisingly on-point in its satire of both the North Korean regime and American media.
The film’s underlying message is that words and public image are the best way to take down a tyrant.
It’s not the new Great Dictator or Dr Strangelove, but The Interview is still unexpectedly solid.
