Review: The Good, The Bad, The Weird

The Good, The Bad, The Weird
(Kim Jee-Woon):
Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun, Jung Woo-sung, Yoon Je-moon
Running time: 120 minutes (15A)

For a film so in thrall to Sergio Leone and all things western, surely a more apt title would have been Once Upon A Time In Asia? For Kim Jee-Woon’s oater is set in 1930s Manchuria, and shoots with a double barrel of slick Eastern violence and Korean whack-out humour. The camera swoops and glides like an eagle and comes to rest in a train. It’s not clear who is shooting who in the first 15 minutes (they’re all after a map that leads to buried treasure) but it’s so seductively shot you don’t mind.
Director Kim Jee-Woon (A Tale of Two Sisters) goes at the material with stylish brio. In one split-second shot, a man is blasted into the train wall and bounces back only to be blasted off it again by following bullets. But the fight scenes in open spaces show less control – they’re scrappy and disorientating.
There are good guys, bad guys and weird – the latter, I suppose, is the hero, a typical Korean goofball hero (Song Kang-ho from The Host) who bumbles through wearing a fighter pilot helmet. The cast dress like warlords, cowboys, pop stars and Nazis. It’s zany and feels like it’s in danger of toppling over into post-modern pastiche. But it’s charming. Tarantino would love it.