The Good, The Bad, The Weird

It's a funny thing - I usually head towards World Cinema for a refreshing break from big-budget blockbusters that offer little other than explosive and violent thrills, but sometimes a foreign director embraces the way it's done in Hollywood and I find myself feeling like I'm visiting Soel but eating at a regular Burger King (it's Hungry Jack's here in Australia - so as not to offend royalty I guess.) I know, I know, everyone will be quick to point out that the film which The Good, the Bad, the Weird is based on, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, was a Spaghetti Western, and as such a foreign film itself. But Kim Jee-woon's ode to that Sergio Leone classic owes a lot to action-packed blockbusters from America, raining fire and brimstone upon the characters (and the audience) while keeping everything moving so fast, so relentlessly, that it actually feels like we're furiously chasing our tails. Even Indiana Jones stops every once and a while so we can gather ourselves - and I doubt if even he could have lasted 139 minutes at full throttle in his prime like this without giving some in the audience a stroke. The Good, the Bad, the Weird does what it does quite well though, so while I'm not entirely sold on it's non-stop action approach it works about as well as it can in this specific film. Elsewhere, I find movies of this ilk often tiresome.

Luckily we have three well-drawn characters, all performed with panache. Park Chang-yi, the Bad (Lee Byung-hun) has been tasked with robbing a train and delivering the precious booty onboard, a map, to his benefactor who is hoping to steal it back after selling it. Yoon Tae-goo, the Weird (Song Kang-ho) is a bandit who just so happens to be raiding the same train, not knowing how precious an item it is he's about to steal. Chang-yi's mob surprise him when they make their move. Park Do-won, the Good (Jung Woo-sung) has been tasked with taking down Chang-yi so he can deliver the map to other interested parties and collect on the bounty that's being offered to him by officials. When Tae-goo escapes with the map the other two parties are soon in pursuit, and joined by a group of Manchurian bandits along with, eventually, the Japanese military juggernaut in a frantic race for this "treasure map" that might arguably lead to the riches hidden by the fading Qing dynasty, or else the key to Korean independence which the Japanese are desperate to beat freedom fighters to. In the end a trail of dead bodies, scorched earth and damaged property lead to a final confrontation between the good, the bad and the weird at the very point the map leads to.

Yes - I really liked the three main characters and the ability for Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun and Jung Woo-sung to pull off what in any other movie might have been a trio of one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Song Kang-ho is a South Korean acting juggernaut and larger than life personality that always puts his own personal stamp on his characters - a full-faced, expressive force of nature who often plays impish, playful roles. That's what he gets here, in charge of the "Eli Wallach" part - the most fun of the three, with Tae-goo being a fast-talker with all of the best comedic lines in the film. I'd say Kang-ho might be the most recognizable South Korean actor alive today. Funnily enough, Lee Byung-hun's big breakthrough came opposite Song Kang-ho himself in Joint Security Area (a great film I recommend), so this is something of a reunion - as different as he is here as the scarred, evil Chang-yi who projects cool confidence and utter ruthlessness at all times. The king of cool though is Jung Woo-sung who, even though he looks so familiar, I don't think I've seen in anything else personally. A small irk is when Korean characters in Korea wear Western garb as if they've raided the wrong wardrobe - but if Park Do-won wants to be a cowboy, I guess that's his choice. Woo-sung oozes sex appeal and is the most swoon-worthy of our three competing characters.

I don't know if costs are cheaper in South Korea but Kim Jee-woon gets a lot of bang for his buck for a $10 million budget. When you consider that Bong Joon-ho's Okja cost five times as much to make, and that this movie runs nearly two-and-a-half bone-crushing, period vehicle destroying, set exploding, bullet spraying hours. The movie looks expensive anyway - Lee Mo-gae's smooth cinematography sometimes butting heads with storyboarded editing that confused audiences and critics at times. Western shootouts have an optimum speed, and when you have more than one character shooting it out against gangs it helps not to bang and crash through the scenery at too high a rate. I wasn't unduly lost - bad guys have always popped up at random in movies like this, and the fact that Tae-goo is being chased by so many disparate characters and groups doesn't really change the fact that the narrative is very, very simple and not hard to grasp - I find it hard to understand why Empire called it "tangled", but sometimes I think viewers are trying to see more than is actually there, and as such think they're missing something. Even a late "finger chopper" twist isn't enough throw keen-eyed viewers for a loop.

I can't help getting the feeling that The Good, the Bad, the Weird might be a truly great action/adventure movie - I take a glance at the trailer for a sense of recall and I have to admit I nearly swoon over the set-pieces. There's a sense of spiritual affinity with the very best the genre has to offer when it comes to the die hard, dusty, exhilarating chase - and the cinematography does emphasise the "cool" aspect like no other movie I've seen so far this year. I think there were an accumulation of small quibbles that prevented me from absolutely loving it - for example, the sound design didn't quite gel with my preference to treat action like this seriously and not get zany. There's a profusion of CGI birds that hang around after festooning the credits, and I really don't like any animals that are obviously computer generated - it's always a minus. Modernized Mexican style music feels a little incongruent in a South Korean film with the action taking place in the deserts of Manchuria, so I wasn't vibing with this movie's score either. But aside from all of that, this is one movie I feel like I'm going to be seeing again just for it's kinetic visuals and fun comedic sensibility.

Just to be clear - I watched the Korean version of this film (which apparently has a different ending to the international version) and without giving away the ending it's the latter director Kim Jee-woon wanted. The darker ending. Overall I don't think the movie was too violent despite the sheer amount of gunfire happening and the fact that there's a "finger chopper" side-plot - it's not an ugly movie. That's because this isn't serious stuff, it's sheer spectacle - a romp that's meant to exhilarate and wow when not amusing us. What I at first thought was going to be a through-and-through western kind of veered into action/comedy territory, and it would only have taken a small tweak or two to completely remove the western visage it has. I couldn't help feeling the aura of Raiders of the Lost Ark throughout, as much as that film has influenced all films of it's ilk. The Good, the Bad, the Weird comes on pretty hard and makes a few mistakes during it's all-out assault on our senses, but there's plenty in it that's fantastic and captures that hard-to-define spirit which defines our long-cherished love of cinematic adventure.