Il buono, il matto, il cattivo

My expectations for this film were through the roof. It's basically a Korean all-star game: directed by Ji-woon Kim, he of A Bittersweet Life and A Tale of Two Sisters fame (not to mention The Quiet Family), and starring three of Korea's finest (or at least most popular) actors, Woo-sung Jung, Byung-hun Lee, and (one of my favorite actors, Korean or otherwise) Kang-ho Song.

The production values are top notch, the direction creative and self-assured, the special effects worth the time and money spent on them. I love the kill scenes as directed by Kim, especially one of the first ones where a guy is running from train car to train car, bursting through doors like they don't exist and then BAM! He's five feet behind where he was. You have to see it to appreciate it, I guess. The timing and the focus on the result instead of the impact makes the impact seem more impactful. Whoever edited this film did a great job.

Woo-sung Jung plays the Good, and he's a cute guy who oozes goodness, so that's good. His character is perhaps a bit under-played/under-developed but that's the nature of Good, isn't it? Byung-hun Lee as the Bad has a little bit too much contemporary in his swagger and look. He's more arrogant than Bad, but we're supposed to dislike him so that's good too. Not surprisingly, it's Kang-ho Song, as the Weird, who steals the show. He runs through this movie like a chicken or a turkey with its head cut off but never misses a beat. He's having a good time and makes sure that we do too. He's able to do things that many other actors are incapable of like delivering predictable lines with equal parts sincerity and irony so that we won't even think of groaning out loud. He's so adorably slightly plump and likable that even when ... well, I don't want to give it away ... we like him. We really do.

Caught up in all the fun and excitement I almost forgot that, with very few exceptions, movies with lots of gun fights are stupid.

This movie is fantastic, exhilarating and fun. High dramatic art it is not.

It's a movie about a chase for treasure, and it holds onto that and never forgets. In the pursuit of creating a chase, everything is crafted carefully. The cinematography is breathtaking, with huge elaborate sets that are used to their fullest. Most of the stunts and effects are real, CGI being kept to a minimum. It is an action movie with actual action instead of pixels, a rarity in movies from the past 10 years. Stunning candy for all the senses, it gets your adrenaline pumping! As far as acting goes, it is excellent. Korean comic actor Song Kang-Ho fills the "Weird" role of Tae-Goo, pulling off a combination of humanity and quirkiness. Lee Byung-Hun is the 'bad' character, brutal and insane as gangster Chang-Yi. Filling out the main three is Jung Woo-Son as the cool, collected and more than a little arrogant bounty hunter Do-Won. While Jung is eclipsed by the other two, his character ultimately became my favorite during the climax. The supporting cast is none-too-shabby either, playing everything from military dropouts to ninjas, all well. Particularly entertaining are the leaders of a group of Manchurian gangsters, who watch insanity take place and calmly discuss it from horseback.

Now, while the acting is good...there is not a lot of it. I don't think anyone is going to try to pretend this is a character-driven piece. It could have been, maybe, but it wasn't try to be. It was trying to be fun. There is enough character development so that when the climax rolls around after two madcap hours of amazing action, you care that the characters lives are being threatened. That's...all.

But the action is extremely well done, with a heart-pounding score that makes it all the well fun. For entertainment, you aren't going to get much more well-done for this. Supremely fun, with scenes shot with people, horses, cars and real pyrotechnics in the middle of the Gobi desert (too much CGI and spectacle just becomes yawn-worthy, I often fun). So get the DVD, get some popcorn, turn the sound WAY up and prepare for a beautifully-crafted action movie. Not for a complex character-driven masterpiece.

Off-kilter Korean neo-western "The Good, the Bad, the Weird," is a frenetic genre mash-up packed with visceral, loopy violence. That isn't a complement so much as it is a description.

Suffice it to say, if you're into a modernist, freewheeling foreign take on Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," with cartoony characters and outrageous action, you're going to have a blast; if you're looking for a substantive or meditative reflection on the period or the original film, you're in the wrong line.

Personally, I'm caught between the two perspectives. I appreciate the pure Peckinpah punch of the gunplay, but was in equal parts bored and bewildered by the overall film. Perhaps the principal flaw in writer/director Ji-woon Kim's script is that he indulges in too much of a good thing. His action sequences are a lot of fun, and the über-stylized retro/modern aesthetic delivers bizarre and inventive visuals like a gunslinger in a deep-sea diving helmet.

But the deafening sound effects and quick cutting style wear thin if not appropriately paced, and "The Good, the Bad, the Weird," is almost relentless in its drag race to the final showdown. I'm loathe to draw a comparison to "Transformers" here, but Kim proves that even good action has a threshold, and there are times in his film where it's easy to let your eyes glaze over.

In its more quiet moments, the story, a very loose retelling of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" follows a band of misfit thieves who come into possession of a treasure map sought by both Chinese thugs and the Japanese military. What's maybe most interesting about the film is seeing the conventions, chronology, and geography of the western customized to fit eastern ideology, and China's Taklimakan desert stands in for Manchuria circa 1940.

The tone is played as loose as the history, however, and Kim is never bogged down by self- seriousness or the oft-stringent requirements of a period piece. "The Good, the Bad, the Weird" is closer to a gleeful "Kill Bill" in tone than South Korea's own operatic, ultraviolent "Oldboy," and benefits from it. Kim easily leapfrogs from hard-hitting shoot-outs to charming comedy, a phenomenon that has everything to do with his incredible cast. Each of the title characters, Park Do-won (Good), Park Chang-yi (Bad), and Yoon Tae-goo (Weird), brings with him a distinct tonal octave that lends the film some much-needed variety. My lone gripe in this department is that it would have been nice to get to know them a little bit better. As it stands, their rifles seem to have far more to say.

And for many, that won't be an issue. I've no question that there exists a very appreciative audience for this film—I'm just not it. Nevertheless, I'm only too happy to report that everything basically works. The cinematography is frequently gorgeous, the performances are stellar, and the action is kinetic—There's just too much of it. By the end of the two-hour engagement, what should be a satisfying, visceral finale comes off as extravagant hoopla.

As viewers we shouldn't be conditioned to expect non-stop action, because once you pass the threshold, there's a diminishing return on adrenaline, impressive as any sequence that follows may be. "The Good, The Bad, The Weird" gets all its forward momentum right, but could benefit from applying the brakes more frequently.

Then again, maybe that reckless pace is what made it such a fast, fun ride to begin with.

Oh, the sweet irony. What would this world be without the acerbic, poignant, scathing realization irony offers? A less interesting place for sure. Take Ji-woon Kim's new (insert traditional Korean food) western action movie for example. The ill-advised title immediately reveals everything that is wrong with it.

Whereas Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is a similar sprawling western adventure from which Ji-woon Kim freely borrows, it still has a masterful story behind its quirks and eccentricities that holds it together. Kim's GBW lifts the plot from Leone's movie wholesale yet forgets to mould it into a story worth the celluloid it's printed on. When the loud explosions, quick cutting and dangerous acrobatics stop for a moment, the silence becomes deafening. And while GBU will remain a staggering classic, GBW will be sooner tossed away for the next collage of things blowing up and stuntmen jumping from high places that Hollywood will serve us.

The titular three (broadly sketched as the strong silent type, the coldhearted bastard and the bumbling fool respectively) are all after a map that reveals the ___location of hidden treasure somewhere in Manchuria. Set in early 20th century east Asia, GBW cross-references the genre world of the American western with then contemporary historical setting, something that in theory should resemble the spaghetti western but instead comes off as a tad on the Hollywood side of things.

GBW hovers in the middle, a thinly plotted pastiche that goes on for too long, a step upward from your run-of-the-mill action blockbuster on the strength of exotic locale alone. Mildly interesting at first until you realize it's a one-trick pony. The opening and pre-climax large action scenes are quite good but the middle sags and drags painfully. Easily the most impressive action scene takes place in the desert and involves the Japanese Imperial army, bandits and some more bandits all chasing after a motorbike. The astonishing panoramas of the army bombing the desert that recall Sergei Bondarchuk's epic WATERLOO are a pleasure to be hold.

I see a lot of people praising this film, not for what it is, but for what it's not (a Hollywood blockbuster); however if we're quick to scoff at the sight of another mindless, airheaded superhero blockbuster, if we refuse to be dazzled by dramatically vapid spectacles that make up for their wafer-thin story and absent characterization by staging bigger, louder, and more CGI-laden scenes of things blowing up and buff guys posing for the camera, I don't see any reason why we should take them from South Koreans in the name of 'foreign cinema' - even when they're presented in the form of homage, or perhaps more so in those cases (as Kim shows no understanding of Leone's cinema). I'm sorry to say I ended up disliking this movie as much as I was looking forward to it.

And finally why didn't anybody tell Kim that GBU spoof titles stopped being cool 20 years ago?

This is a real blast. A London Film Festival viewing this afternoon and my jaw dropped during the opening. This may have the most stunning opening of any film, I certainly can't think of any other contenders at present, with crazy music, a landscape out of a dream, soaring birds of prey and a great big steam train. The camera and hence the audience are everywhere, this side, that side above, below and even in the smoke from the engine. Previously there has been some set up to accompany the credits and then we are away. This film does not let up so if it is not non-stop action you are after you had best avoid. For all sensible folk this is a mind blowing exercise in action cinema. Loud, violent and stunningly shot this is awe inspiring stuff and with a comic edge too. I spent half the time with my mouth agape and rest with a broad smile. I have heard some criticise this for lack of storyline and certainly there is minimal narrative flow here as we are sped on by sheer excitement and amusement. Fantastic entertainment on a massive scale. Large screen viewing recommended.