A-
Directed by Kim Ji Woon
Part spaghetti western, part "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", "The Good, the Bad, the Weird" defies expectations and is a surprising and utterly exhilirating moviegoing experience, the likes of which are unfortunately quite rare these days.
Kim's film follows the intertwined adventures of bounty hunter (The Good), hired gun (The Bad), and a hapless yet unkillable train robber (The Weird) in pre World War II Machuria. After the train robber (played by the awesome Song Kang Ho) recovers a treasure map in a train heist gone terribly wrong, he sets off a race for the map between the hired gun, the bounty hunter, and a number of other rivaling factions. As the map changes hands and more and more people get waxed trying to recover it, doubts begin to surface about the existence of a treasure.
As madcap and brainless as "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird" may be, constructing such a fast paced and utterly unhinged epic takes a great deal of skill considering how rare it is for this type of film to succeed. In this respect, the quality of Kim's direction should be lauded as much as the film's technical savy which is, admittedly, vastly superior to most of what you find in the action genre these days. The scale of the action in "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird" is also enough to make any action aficianado giddy with delight. The film's opening act, an over the top train heist gone wrong, would be a heck of a closing sequence for 99% of action films, yet it pales in comparison to a number of the set pieces that follow, including the truly awesome third act which features Song Kang Ho's character being chased through the desert by two rival gangs on horseback who are in turn being chased by a regiment of Japanese soldiers. It's on a scale that brings back memories of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and other epics of the Hollywood golden years and it makes for an exhilirating, jaw dropping rush that is well worth the price of admission.
