The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Look! I changed my blog!! I thought it'd make sense to use toffee colour being toffeeish and everything. What do you think? I might change it again, but it's better than the ocean don't you think?

This film is really good!! The plot is pretty simple, but it's executed so beautifully. It is inspired by 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly', but since I haven't watched that, I can't make any comparisons or anything like that! It's all based around this treasure map that EVERY one wants!!! Amongst the people who want this map are three villians that are the focus of the squabble. Really, that is the whole movie in a nutshell. But there's also the Japanese army and Chinese Bandits chasing after this map which makes for some pretty extreme battle scenes. It all starts because Yoon Tae Go stole the map on what he thought was a standard train theft, but when news gets out he finds himself running for his life all for a map. It ends with a climatic shoot out between the three of them. Winner takes all.
I did say the plot is simple!!! Of course there are some mysteries and back stories which I could tell you about... but that would spoil the film! In all truthfulness, I did get confused by said simple plot.... but only because I had some difficulties in remembering the characters names..... I'm no good with Korean names ok!
The plot comes second to the action though with more than half of the film containing full blown battles and the other with more minor fights, it's not really important to understand this film to appreciate it because of said fight scenes!! Ok, one of the battles did appear to go on forever, but other than that they were really exciting!!
It's difficult to review the characters in very much detail with out giving away the plot twists but I'll try! I think the most intresting thing about them is that they all think of themselves as the best, at the final confrontation they are all making arrogant remarks about how they'll win but obviously only one can. Yoon Tae Go is 'The Weird', at first he appears to be a fairly low-class thief and is pretty frantic and foolish. It doesn't even look like he can fight well, it's more luck with him. He appears very laid back and uncaring, but when his friend got into trouble his urgency to help was unbelievable! Park Do Won is 'The Good',  but I wouldn't necessarily label him as good. He's a bounty hunter so he does go after the bad guys.....  just he does it for the money.... so yeah.... He's quite the mysterious one and talks very little, he has a very cool aura. He's very innovative when he's fighting and has a very keen eye, it's quite spectacular watching him shoot down all his opponents. But my favourite is 'The Bad' Park Chang Yi. He is the definition of evil just casually shooting whoever he wants to and being more concerned about the fact that blood just got splashed on his face. Th best part is, HE LOOKS SO COOL WHEN DOING IT!!!! He has such a cool outfit and lots of fancy gun twirling moments. He's is super fast and you never know what he would do next, I thought he was the best fighter.
Sure the characters and plot are good but that's not what the film is worth watching for. It's the stunts, effects, cinematography and setting that you need to look at! The train scene at the beginning was so beautiful, the train itself was a gorgeous steam train that looked super professional and then all the people on the train looked so spectacular!! All the guns and knifes were well made and well used. The blood and fire effects were all super believable and don't get started on how grossly realistic it looked when Chang Yi tried to cut some one's finger off, my finger hurts when I think about it!! I can totally see why this is the most expensive South Korean film ever made!! Have 100's of men on horses or in cars chasing after Tae Go on his moter-bike, each brandishing their own weapon. I can't even imagine how hard it must have been to organise all that and get so many brilliant camera shots!! Really, the guy in charge of the cameras must be some kind of God to do all that!!
The fight scenes in this film have been so perfectly choreographed that they'd probably look amazing with a single camera, but this film goes one step further and makes the most perfect use of any angle possible! The acting fits each unique character and every one has some interesting motives. Really, this film is fantastic, I only have slight discontent at the action to plot ratio, but other than that, PERFECTION.

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