The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008)

Original title: Joheunnom Nabbeunnom Isanghannoom

Director: Kim Jee-Woon

Writers: Kim Jee-Woon, Min-Suk Kim

Composers: Dalparan, Yeong-Gyu Jang

Starring: Kang-Ho Song, Byung-Hun Lee, Woo-Sung Jung, Je-Mun Yun, Seung-Su Ryu, Young-Chang Song, Byung-Ho Son, Dal-Su Oh, Cheong-A Lee, Kwang-Il Kim

More info: IMDb

Plot: The story of two outlaws and a bounty hunter in 1940s Manchuria and their rivalry to possess a treasure map while being pursued by the Japanese army and Chinese bandits.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Probably.

This is a very stylized flick where the style is like to either excite or piss off the audience.  Some of the look and characters are distracting in that over the top, this is bullshit, way that happens when you've got a director who really wants to make an outrageous picture that hopes to achieve a cult status or something of the like.  It's obvious the director saw Tarantino's KILL BILL (2003) and wanted to play in that guy's sandbox of style.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  It doesn't when it's insanely obvious.  He even goes so far as to use the same bit of the American pop song, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, in the film, the same tune used at the beginning of the KILL BILL fight with O-Ren Ishii.  Shit like that bugs the piss out of me.  The music score is all over the place and as such, it only partially works. However, there's no denying the wonderfully comic performance of Kang-Ho Song as "The Weird".  He's fantastic.  He's an actor that gets a lot of mileage out of his facial expressions no matter how subtle they are.  I can't remember the character's name but the guy with the pompadour is hilarious.  It's a pretty fun flick with lots of action and gunfights.  It looks like a Western but set in the East and in the 1940s.  If you can stomach a film whose characters are either incredible shots or those who can't hit the broad side of a barn, depending on what the story calls for...if you can overlook crap like that, you'll find a fun movie that sometimes tries too hard but ultimately will probably leave you with a smile on your face.