{"id":533,"date":"2009-02-01T17:22:17","date_gmt":"2009-02-01T16:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2009\/02\/01\/the-good-the-bad-the-weird\/"},"modified":"2016-08-28T07:12:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T06:12:06","slug":"the-good-the-bad-the-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2009\/02\/01\/the-good-the-bad-the-weird\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good, The Bad, The Weird"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Good, The Bad, The Weird<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Format:<\/B> Cinema

\nRelease date:<\/B> 6 February 2009

\nDistributor:<\/B> Icon

\nDirector:<\/B> Kim Jee-woon

\nWriters:<\/B> Kim Jee-woon, Kim Min-suk

\nCast:<\/B> Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun, Jung Woo-sung

\nOriginal title: <\/B> Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom<\/I>

\nSouth Korea 2008

\n120 minutes\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There is a little ominous talk of a map, cutting to a bird of prey hovering, then swooping down to snatch carrion from the tracks of an oncoming train, which the camera flies through in a dazzling tracking shot as the Spanish guitars kick in on the soundtrack, following a bustling figure closely through the busy carriages until he suddenly pulls out a gun and you realise you haven’t breathed for two minutes. Welcome to Kim Jee-woon<\/a>‘s insanely enjoyable ‘oriental Western’ The Good, The Bad, The Weird<\/I>, in which three great Korean actors (Lee Byung-hun, Jung Woo-sung and the godlike Song Kang-ho) chase each other, fight each other, then chase and fight some more as they scramble after some kind of treasure map in 1930s Manchuria. <\/p>\n

I suspect that if you know your oriental history there will be a little more going on; Korea is referred to throughout as a stolen country, the Japanese are clearly the bastards du jour<\/I>, and there is a running theme that if you don’t have a country any more then money will have to do. But this is first and foremost a film about sound and vision, of body language and colour. It’s just about puddle deep, has no female characters worth a damn, and is blatantly cobbled together from other sources, but who cares? It grabs the audience from the start with the dizzying train robbery\/ bandit attack \/ bounty hunter shootout sequence and then doesn’t really let go for another couple of hours, culminating in a jaw-dropping motorbike vs cavalry vs entire Japanese army at 80 miles an hour sequence that had my inner 12-year-old grinning like a crazy bastard. It’s got a wonderful percussive score, it looks fantastic, the three leads are great and it keeps the CGI to a minimum. I have a problem with the ending, but you don’t need to know that. <\/p>\n

‘Life is about chasing and being chased’, Song Kang-ho states in one of the few placid moments, well… no, but this film is. It’s a blast. Go see.<\/p>\n

Mark Stafford <\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kim Ji-woon’s insanely enjoyable ‘oriental Western’ The Good, The Bad, The Weird, in which three great Korean actors chase each other, fight each other, then chase and fight some more as they scramble after some kind of treasure map in 1930s Manchuria.
\nReview by Mark Stafford <\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1371,165,155],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema-releases","tag-kim-jee-woon","tag-korean-cinema","tag-south-korean-cinema"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-8B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1639,"url":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2011\/04\/26\/i-saw-the-devil\/","url_meta":{"origin":533,"position":0},"title":"I Saw the Devil","author":"VirginieSelavy","date":"April 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In Kim Ji-Woon's new film, vengeance is all, in a full-throated, blood-soaked revenge opera. 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