Well, once again it was time to see the next "big" Korean blockbuster The Good, The Bad and The Weird and once again I went into the movie with no high hopes and I got exactly what I thought I would get. An empty, pretty, popcorn picture.
What you have in this film is Woo-sung Jung playing "The Good" a bounty hunter who hates the fact that Japan has taken over Korea. We also have Byung-hun Lee playing "The Bad" a exiled Korean who wants to become a legendary bandit. Lastly, we have Kang-ho Song playing "The Weird" who plays a simple bandit who wants to become rich.
The plot of the film is during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s. The Weird steals a map from a Japanese official. The Bad is paid to get the map back. The Good is a bounty hunter who tracks them both down to return the map to the Korean Independence Army.
If you suspend reality for awhile, the film will work for you. I kept watching the film and I kept wondering, "What in the heck were they thinking when they were making this film?" The song that kept playing over and over was written in the 1960's not the 30's when this film supposedly takes place. It was this error and a lot of the little historical errors in this flick that made me turn against this film.
Now, the film has some very funny shots and it and you will laugh at some of it. Each time that Kang-ho Song humor is on the screen, he dwarfs the other actors and this, in my humble opinion, also hurts the film. I had the chance to see this film at the Yongsan CGV where the film will play for a few weeks with English Subtitles. The subtle humor was lost in the translation and this will also hurt the film when it plays in a very limited release in the US in early 2009.
Overall if you want to see a good popcorn film over the weekend this will be worth one viewing. Any more that that will lead to a disappointment once again with Korean Films.
Grade. C-
How I saw it. Yongsan CGV (With English Subtitles)
Opened in Korea on 17 July 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment