South Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, best known for his dark
comedy-horror film The Quiet Family (later remade by Takashi Miike as a
musical The Happiness of the Katakuris) and A Tale of Two Sisters,
ordinarily entrenched in horror ventured outside of his comfort zone into the
action-western-comedy epic in 2008 with his first and only feature film work as
a director-writer-producer The Good, the Bad, the Weird. A riff on the 1966 Sergio Leone Spaghetti
Western classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly featuring three of Korean
cinema’s top billing stars Song Kang-ho (Parasite), Lee Byung-hun (I
Saw the Devil) and Jung Woo-sung (City of the Rising Sun), it was a
rare example of the Korean period western featuring a group of nefarious or
mercurial characters all in pursuit of hidden treasure. Going on to become a massive hit in Korea,
the film was recut by the director himself for international release in a
version closer to his intentions. For
posterity, Arrow Video in their forthcoming 4K box supervised and approved by
Kim Jee-woon with original lossless 7.1 audio tracks, both the original Korean
and the director’s preferred international cuts have been included here.
1930s Manchuria, three gunslinging Korean men board a
running train full of passengers each with different goals of robbery. However, after gunfire breaks out, the three
men comprised of ‘Good’ bounty hunter Park Dowon (Jung Woo-sung), ‘Bad’ bandit
Park Chang-yi (Lee Byung-hun) and ‘Weird’ thief Yoon Tae-goo (Song Kang-ho)
find themselves racing each other towards a unified goal of unearthing buried
treasure indicated by a map they’re constantly trying to steal from each
other.
At one point the bounty hunter
and thief join forces trying to get the best of the viciously violent and
murderous bandit, but ultimately amid the back stabbings and finger
dismembering each of these three men are in this war for themselves. While careening over the Manchurian desert in
extended chase sequences largely on train with horseback, motor vehicles come
into play here as well and at times the film feels like an Asian period The
Road Warrior. While funny and fast, it
also takes no prisoners in terms of its brutalities endemic to mid-2000s Korean
cinema and as a spectacle it was one of the largest and most ambitious screen
undertakings in the history of Korean movies at the time.
Song Kang-ho it goes
without saying is one of South Korea’s greatest living actors (watch Sympathy
for Mr. Vengeance if you don’t believe me) and he’s plainly having a
carefree blast here as the kooky thief who might be more than he leads on. Lee Byung-hun from Joint Security Area has
wily fun here as the sociopathic and sadistic Bad guy with a memorably (if not
infamous) slice and dice scene involving a dagger you won’t soon forget. Jung Woo-sung as the Good bounty hunter is
solid and would go on to win the Best Actor award for Innocent Witness but
is still no match for the electricity of his costars.
--Andrew Kotwicki