In continuing the theme of ‘Western Month’, which we just came up with (thanks for getting the ball rolling AYM) we thought we’d share with you a quirky little dish from the Orient that is quite possibly one of the best Westerns to have come out of any film industry in years, if not decades. The words ‘Korea’ and ‘Cowboy Westerns’ do not light a match in most minds, but Jee-Woon Kim is clearly hewn from a different cloth. In ‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’, the horror-movie auteur, whose ‘A Tale Of Two Sisters’ is an ongoing project for me (since I can’t seem to watch more than 10 minutes at a time before everything in the house starts going ‘bump’ at night), comes up with a delightfully eccentric take on quintessential gunslinger folklore that reinvents the genre in a way few have since Clint Eastwood’s bleak neo-noir ‘Unforgiven’.Story: Set in 1940s Manchuria, a desolate landscape populated with a kaleidoscopic mix of colorful characters and rife with danger, the film follows three gunslingers, Park Do-won (The Good), Park Chang-Yi (The Bad) and Yoon Tae-Go (The Weird), each trying to get their hands on a mysterious treasure map for varying reasons. Along the way, they face off against an assortment of delightfully bizarre adversaries including a blank-faced gang of desert bandits, Korean freedom fighters, and even the Japanese army, not to mention each other, in a series of memorable gun fights and edge-of-the-seat chases that are would put the best Hollywood bang-bang actioners to shame.
Review: The overly cheeky nod to Sergio Leone’s classic in the title is certainly a little off-putting, suggesting the kind of Hollywood staple, assembly line parody that relies on slapdash pop-culture references, bargain-basement production values and an audience high on pot. But take a leap of faith and this Khimchi Western rewards on every level.
TGTBTW is not going to be considered high art any time soon, but it should be. Everything clicks in this ambitious venture, from the uber-stylish direction and delightfully corny dialogue, to the painstakingly crafted oriental-gothic sets and the brilliantly choreographed shoot-outs that destroy them. Bollywood, with its penchant for co-opting the term ‘masala’ film-making, would do well to learn a thing or two from TGTBTW about what a true masala film should be. This is a film that embraces its place in cinema as a campy, stylish actioner with seemingly little to say (though the ‘twist’ in the end has many implications for those that choose to think about it). And in doing that it creates two wonderfully breezy hours of entertainment that will appeal to all action movie buffs, from fans of Spaghetti Westerns to worshippers of Lord Rajni, and everyone in between. Highly recommended Sunday afternoon recreation!
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Fun Fact: Sergio Leone was originally inspired to make his Spaghetti Westerns after watching several of Akira Kurosawa’s seminal Samurai films like ‘The Seven Samurai’. It is almost fitting that this homage to the genre he created almost single-handedly, comes straight from the Orient (though not necessarily from Japan).
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