The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Kim Jee-Woon,2008):South Korea

Reviewed by Maurice Cohen.  Viewed at the AFI Film Festival, LA

Remember those good old western movies, where there is the good guy, the bad guy and the beautiful girl which the man are fighting over. Basically the men are fighting each other while chasing the girl. Now imagine the same western but simply trade the girl for a map that shows where the treasure is hidden and add this weird guy who has this treasure map. Now we have the good guy and the bad guy fighting each other while chasing our weird person who has the map. Then we have The good, The bad, The weird. It’s an interesting western where action meets comedy and comedy meets more action directed by Ji-Woon Kim. He won the “Best Director” award for this movie at the Catalonian Film Festival. I saw this movie at the Film Festival in Hollywood. Almost every seat was taken, and when the movie ended the audience gave a loud applause away.

It all begins at this mysterious high class house where we get to meet the ‘ The bad”, who acknowledge his self as the best killer in the world. His boss tells him to retrieve this map, showing where ‘The Treasure” is hidden. He plans getting the map when it’s on the train guarded by to men. Suddenly there is this thief who gets to the map before ‘the bad’ does. This thief is ‘the weird’. At the same time we meet ‘the good’ who has the same goal as ‘the bad’ which is , getting this map no matter what. While ‘the good’ is chasing ‘the bad’ and ‘the bad’ is chasing ‘the weird’ we get see a lot of action scenes which are really entertaining. At the end after a lot of sweat and tears ‘the good’, ‘the bad’ and ‘the weird’ finally all meet, for the ultimate fight. Showdown! It’s possible having a showdown with three people, its even more intense then just having two people. Who will win this ultimate showdown?

There is a lot of use of sound in this movie to get you really in the scene, just as the movie The chaser. Maybe it’s just me but after while I was aware of the music too much. But then again the special effects make up for this failure. The locations used in the movie are great. Little towns where the houses are all build from wood right in the middle of the dessert. What I also want to point out is the use of the camera. It’s a steady rolling along camera. In a few scenes where everybody’s chasing everybody on horses the camera rolls along and right through everybody which gives a kind of a 3D effect.

I would highly recommend this movie. A 120 minutes well spent. The action and the comedy are sublime and the cinematography creates this atmosphere as if you are in the movie chasing this map. I could see why Ji- Woon Kim won the Best Director award for his creation.
It’s a movie for young as old. The old Western meeting a new Western with a Korean tint.