Sorry I didn't get to see this on the big screen
So it's been 2 years since it came out at the IFC, but I missed it then, so I finally got around to watching The Good, The Bad, The Weird, a korean action-comedy-homage to Sergio Leone in particular and Spaghetti Westerns in general. It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that I'm very fond of Spaghetti Westerns. They're the original summer blockbuster - bombastic, anachronistic, and gleefully ridiculous.
GBW isn't a remake, as I originally thought, but a stylistic re-interpretation of the genre in a 1930s Korean setting. As you might imagine, the story is classic Leone-style: the Bad is hired to steal a map of great important to the Japanese, the Weird shows up and steals it first by accident, and the Good is just out to bring the Bad in for a bounty. Nothing more, nothing less. And yet, in the resulting chase between the three draws in two local gangs, the Korean independence movement, and the Japanese-Manchurian army. In the end, the plot is really there for one reason: for the three main characters to slowly but surely get drawn tighter and tighter together in increasingly ridiculous set-pieces (including possibly the greatest horseback chase scene in history) until the inevitable final showdown.
So how is it? In a word...wonderful. This flm has everything. Cowboys, machine guns, bandits, trains, motorcycles, Tarzan-style gun-battles, ridiculously out-of-place boy band haird, and bullets that never run out until a character needs a cool reloading pose, all set to a soundtrack that is about 50% genre music and 50% techno K-hop. The three main characters are each really funny in totally different ways, and are complete different in style, temperament, and approach. This is one of those films where you can tell that they had a blast just making it.
Highly recc'd for anyone even curious, it's on Netflix streaming.
GBW isn't a remake, as I originally thought, but a stylistic re-interpretation of the genre in a 1930s Korean setting. As you might imagine, the story is classic Leone-style: the Bad is hired to steal a map of great important to the Japanese, the Weird shows up and steals it first by accident, and the Good is just out to bring the Bad in for a bounty. Nothing more, nothing less. And yet, in the resulting chase between the three draws in two local gangs, the Korean independence movement, and the Japanese-Manchurian army. In the end, the plot is really there for one reason: for the three main characters to slowly but surely get drawn tighter and tighter together in increasingly ridiculous set-pieces (including possibly the greatest horseback chase scene in history) until the inevitable final showdown.
So how is it? In a word...wonderful. This flm has everything. Cowboys, machine guns, bandits, trains, motorcycles, Tarzan-style gun-battles, ridiculously out-of-place boy band haird, and bullets that never run out until a character needs a cool reloading pose, all set to a soundtrack that is about 50% genre music and 50% techno K-hop. The three main characters are each really funny in totally different ways, and are complete different in style, temperament, and approach. This is one of those films where you can tell that they had a blast just making it.
Highly recc'd for anyone even curious, it's on Netflix streaming.