Song Kang-Ho as Tae-goo in The Good, The Bad and the Wierd.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird
- Directed by Kim Jee-woon
- Written by Kim Jee-woon and Kim Min-seok
- Starring Jeong Woo-seong (the Good), Lee Byung-hun (the Bad), Song Kang-ho (the Weird)
In the past decade, with such films as House of Flying Daggers and The Promise, the Chinese state-run film industry has made a concerted effort to show that its directors can match Hollywood in creating crowd-pleasing blockbusters .
The Good, the Bad, the Weird serves the same purpose for Korean cinema. It's proof that Koreans can make their own mindless fun, with daring action sequences and historical spectacles. At a cost of $17-million, this 2008 film by Kim Jee-Woon ( A Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life) is purportedly the most expensive in Korean history. Though that cost might represent the catering budget for a Hollywood summer hit, Kim's film is as slick as any major Hollywood action flick .
The inspiration is Sergio Leone's 1966 epic spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, which starred Eli Wallach, Clint Eastwood and Lee von Cleef as three men competing to gain a treasure.
Instead of Leone's American Civil War setting, though, the violent backdrop here is provided by Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the 1930s. That also makes it a throwback to a popular South Korean genre of the early sixties known as the Manchurian western.
Apart from some lush, widescreen camera work, Kim's style doesn't have much to do with Leone or classic Hollywood westerns. His hybrid approach is a mixture of John Woo and Steven Spielberg, with a Hong Kong action-film flair for comic violence.
The principal characters are easy to identify. First introduced is the Bad (Lee Byung-hun), a sadistic punk who is hired to get a map from a bank official on a train. Before he can succeed, the Weird (a pie-faced buffoon in a sheepskin hat played by Song Kang-ho of The Host fame) takes the map and runs.
Soon, we also meet the Good (Korean heartthrob Jeon Woo-seong), a Stetson-wearing bounty hunter who wants to a collect a reward on the Bad. He plays the role Eastwood had in the original, so his main job is to talk quietly and shoot straight.
The film is all about action set-pieces, with bits of drama and comedy thrown in as connective tissue. Among a number of stand-out sequences, there's the Good swinging on a rope high above the ground while exchanging potshots with a rival, and a teeth-rattling jeep-motorcycle-horse race across the desert that stretches out to more than 15 minutes. The reliably goofy Weird is also involved in a gory subplot about a character known as the Finger Chopper.
Running well over two hours, The Good, the Bad, the Weird has plenty of all three elements to offer, but the good and weird elements prevail. For an Asian knock-off of a 1960s European version of a Hollywood western, the film feels paradoxically original.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is playing Aug. 6-12 at the Bloor Cinema.
Liam Lacey