Have Gun, Will Travel

I went to the Bloor Cinema to check out a 2008 Korean western, an homage to all those spaghetti western movies, called "The Good, The Bad, The Weird". It's gotten great reviews from all the papers. Can all these critics be wrong?

Nope, they're right. It was a great movie - much more enjoyable than any recent Hollywood flick I've seen. The premise is simple: It is the 1930s. a Korean gangster sells a map, perhaps to some buried treasure, to a Japanese official. Wanting both the map and the money, he double crosses his customer by hiring a psychopathic killer named Chang-yi and his gang to steal the map back by robbing the train carrying the Japanese through Manchuria. But a petty thief called Tae-Goo robs the train first and absconds with it. Hot on their tail for the reward money is the bounty hunter Do-Won. Throw in other assorted low-life such as the Ghost Market Gang and baddies, the Japanese army!, and you have a rollicking Wild West adventure set in the Far East.

Unlike recent Hollywood action flicks which were heavily reliant on a lot of CG, I felt more involved because this movie used actual desert locations and real stunts. Obviously there was CG but it was not intrusive. My favourite set pieces included Do-Won swinging on rope over a shanty town, blasting away with his rifle and a wild chase scene of 5 disparate groups on horseback, motorcycles, jeeps, and vans, all shooting at each other. The image of a cowboy firing at the enemy while his horse is in full gallop (all non CG) was so thrilling that I wanted to go horseback riding after the movie. The movie took all the standard tropes: the stoic hero, the wild-eyed baddie, and even the showdown and made it - it'd be a stretch to say fresh or new - enjoyable. There was a minor issue, a tendency of a lot of Asian films, to have characters reveal some background plot or motivation via expositional speech. But overall, it was a fun 2 hours.

I left the theatre flexing my fingers by my side as if I was preparing to draw my guns before I came to my senses. Pew pew! Pew pew!