The controversial film The Interview has been released on Netflix, opening up the doors for many people to watch it and find out what all the hype and tension with North Korea is all about.
Netflix subscribers in the US and Canada have been streaming the movie since its online release and posting comments on social networks about what they thought about it. Most of the reviews on Twitter refer to the film as “horrible”, “tasteless”, and not worth watching. Some critics have even gone as far as accusing Sony of staging the hacking of their system so that the film would receive more publicity and therefore make more money.
Reviews: ‘The Interview’
The film has already made over US$40 million from online and on-demand viewings and US$5.9 million from the box office, breaking even on its budget of US$46 million. The Interview has a good rating of 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb, the average of over 147,000 votes posted by users on the online movie database but twitter users slashed the movie over its first weekend after being released on Netflix, describing remorse for watching it and wasting money on streaming it. The film has a weak score of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The movie was originally scheduled for a wide release but Sony Pictures pulled out of that plan after their systems were hacked, and the film as well as other sensitive information was leaked into the public by hackers. It was later revealed that the cyber attack was linked to the North Korean government, which showed dismay in the film’s portrayal of the country’s leader Kim Jong-un and the film was referred to as a “movie of terrorism” by the hacking group Guardians of Peace. In the film, two journalists played by Seth Rogan and James Franco are secretly recruited to by the CIA to assassinate North Korea’s leader, after being granted permission to interview Kim Jong-un in North Korea .
The film is a critique of U.S. policy as well as the totalitarian government in North Korea. The political satire is Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg’s second directorial work.