The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Ji-woon Kim, 2009):South Korea

Reviewed by David Brown. Viewed at the ArcLight, AFI FIlm Festival.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird is one of the best “remakes” of a movie I have ever seen. This is parody of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, that everyone should see. This movie has some of the greatest physical comedy a movie can offer. The jokes are fun, silly, and very memorable. This movie has a lot to offer an average audience and the movie cult audience. This movie was one of the most enjoyable of the film festival.

The actors fit their parts very well and payed homage to the originals they were portraying. You could very easily understand which character was good, bad, and weird. There were three very distinct personalities on the screen. The director Ji-Woon Kim really has a presence that is noticed throughout the movie. His shot selection is very different from almost all directors. You will be enjoying every shot from first to last.

The movie opens up with a high speed train robbery. We see one character sneaking his way onto the train and then blasting everyone in his way to the back of the train. He finds the man he is looking for and then the train crashes into some debris on the tracks that was set there by another group of people that are also robbing the train. After the crash everyone in the back car is dead except for the sneaking character who gets what he came for and begins making his way off the train. We eventually have a third party involved in the robbery and we have a Mexican stand off to see who can get whatever the first robber has taken. Eventually the stand-off leaves the original robber in possession of what looks to be a map of great value. From there the other two involved at the train scene will try to hunt down the man with the map.

This film has so many positive attributes it will be hard to list them all without forgetting something. The directing could be summed up as original and fun. There some amazing shots that I have never seen before. The opening of the train robbery scene shows helicopter shots of the train that swoops by and turns around and just keeps going on until we enter the smoke stack. There is another amazing shot from an action scene where The Good is swinging on a rope and the shot follows him on a camera that looks like it is swinging right behind him. Not only is the direction good but the cinematography adds another layer of fun to the movie. The shots are very well planned and look really beautiful too. The feel the movie is fun so we have very nice high key lighting and bright colors and lots of movement. The audio just adds so much to the movie too. Not only is the soundtrack upbeat, fast, and fun the sound effects are very cartoonish and just keep building up the fun factor. The acting is just right, not only for the three main characters but also for the extras. All of the parts mesh so well together that nothing seems to be out of place. The Good couldn’t have been a better homage of Clint Eastwood’s performance in the original. He just feels like a badass even in a flat-out comedy versus a drama.

I could only compare the silliness of this movie to one other. This movie feels almost exactly like Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series. The violence is so ridiculous that you laugh your head off when you see it happen. Even though it can be over the top, like ramming a sword into someone backside, you realize that it’s just for fun and no other purpose. There is never a dull moment and lots of jokes that are original to keep you going. I feel like I could watch this movie over and over again multiple times in a row.

This movie is highly recommended for anyone who’s looking to spend 2 hours just laughing. If you have a good sense of humor for pottymouth and silly antics go see this movie. Anyone who is a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s style will find this movie to be very enjoyable. This is a movie that can be watching over and over again. There is no reason to not see this movie it has something for everyone.