Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
Also known as
Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom
Lists
It isn't long since Sukiyaki Western Django put an Eastern twist on a tired genre, and already Ji-woon Kim (A Bittersweet Life) has responded with his own "kimchi western", derived as the title suggests from ergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
1930's Manchuria makes a superb backdrop: Korean rebels who fled there to fight a guerilla war against the occupation are once more under the thumb of the Japanese, who invaded after the Mukden Incident in 1931.
Freedom fighters, bandits, railroads and guns, you couldn't ask for a better setting for a western. The plot is daft but action-packed, a showdown between three gunfighters over a purported treasure map. It's an easy, entertaining time, though in typical Korean fashion there's a dark subplot involving a knife-fighting psychopath who cuts off his victims' fingers.