The Good, The Bad, The Weird

This may well be old news to some of you because this particular Korean film did the rounds of the independant film market some months ago but It's only just come to my attention via adverts (on the tube of all things) so nyurrrrr.

Anyhoo, The Good, The Bad, The Wierd is a film that takes more than a few pointers from Sergeo leone's similarly named film. Thankfully, it's considerably better than that particularly over hyped spaghetti western.

Things start off really, really well. There's a scene involving a Yakuzza boss instructing his Korean mercenary to nick a map back from some generals he's just sold it to. To this end, Korean Mercenary chap stops a train mid voyage. Things go wrong when a thief nicks the map and a bounty hunter turns up with his eyes set very firmly on the mercenary.

Now, it's really tempting to say that the film would have been better if it was half the length and set entirely on the train. The 20 minutes we spend there have so much energy and originality to them, I would have loved to see more.

In stead, the film takes us to various different localles, including a black market and a desert where the final showdown happens. The structure feels very similar to Versus - there are very long, very original action scenes intersperced with very short, quite poignant dialogue.

I was about to say that this film is eveyrthing Somkin' Aces wanted to be (which is true) when I realised that The Good, The Bad, The Wierd is incredibly derrivative. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. The Matrix was incredibly derrivative and that was the best film of its day.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird takes elements from many walks of cinema - spaghetti western, hong kong action film, wushu martial arts, western buddy cop drama and adds that Korean spark that means you never have any idea what's going to happen in the film next.

So it's good. It's not perfect, though. The run time is two hours which is a good half hour too long- the last quater feels decidedly messy. For example, in one scene, some children are rescued from an antagonist. They are shown with their rescuer, escaping. We then cut to another character doing something inocuous and when we cut back, the children are gone. What the hell happened to them? Were they dropped off at a friendly town or something?

It's definitely worth seeing, though. It's especially good for people who don't particularly like Spaghetti Westerns (like me) because you get all the good parts with the spin of another culture to make them interesting. Huzzah!