The Good, The Bad, and The Weird (4/5)

Today as I browse through Netflix, I suddenly got a feeling to watch this film. The Good, The Bad, and The Weird is a western Korean film(or 'Oriental Western' as title prefer) by Kim Ji-Woon. I remember missing it when it first coming and now I finally got a chance to see it. Now I'm not really that crazy with Korean film, but this is probably one of the Korean film I could watch twice.

Plot:

In a tale that obviously inspired by 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly', 'The Good, The Bad, and The Weird' is story of three man: a train robbery -Yoon Tae-goo/The Weird(Song Kang-ho); a hitman- Park Chang-yi/The Bad(Lee Byung-hun); and a bounty hunter - Park Do-won/The Good(Jung Woo-sung). All those three men are binding together when Tae-goo find a secret map that lead to secret treasure hidden in the midst of Mongolian desert. Then he enter the strange partnership with Do-won and together they went to find the treasure while fighting Chang-Yi's gang, Mongolian bandit, and Imperial Japanese army.

Not in this image: truck with machine gun and artillery.

While plot is pretty simple, I found myself lost sometime during the beginning. But this is probably because I don't have any knowledge about 1930 Mongolia and their conflict with the Japanese. I wish that they should put some opening text telling us more about historical background in the beginning.  That would help me a lot.

Also, while the title is 'The Good, The Bad, and The Weird', the important of the each character are actually in reverse. It might make me feel a bit jarring at first but I can adjust it as the plot goes on.


Acting:

The acting in the film is quite good for an action film. Especially Lee Byung-hun(who also play Strom Shadow in G.I. Joe film) who dominate all of his screen time. Of all three, he got the best script and he delivers a role of sadistic Park Chang-Yi perfectly. His sadistic glared and cold attitude serve the character well. It make him unique and totally different from Angel Eye (Lee Van Cleef's character) in 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly'.

The Bad

On the other hand Song Kang-ho as Yoon Tae-goo is quite good too. As first he seems to be a carbon copy of Tuco (Eli Wallach's character) in 'The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly'. Not to mention that he plays an idiot action survivor once in 'The Host'. But that's exist only until the final showdown where his character become a total reverse. In the reveal, he deliver the shift of character with a subtle yet satisfied.

The Weird

As for Jung Woo-sung as Park Do-won, sadly he have the plainest script of all three. Do-won is a full carbon of 'The Man With No Name' archetype that Clint Eastwood build his career on. Unfortunately, I didn't feel a 'presence of death' that Eastwood has from him and make him feels overshadow the other two.

Still, as a compensation, he got most of the badass scene in the movie especially the final chase on the desert.

And The Good.

Conclusion:

I totally recommend this film. At least just to get different feel from 'Oriental Western'. At first the pace might be  slowly and confusing, but it will get better as it go on. It has a lot of good action scene which combine by good soundtrack and a good cinematography. No reason to not watch it, either on Netflix or Blu-ray.

Now I feel little bad that I didn't watch it on big screen already.

4/5 stars


Disclaimer:

All of the picture reference in this article are copyright from 2008 CJ Entertainment.