Guns And Talks (2001)

Guns and Talks (2001)

AKA Killerduelua Suda

Jang Jin, Director. 125 Minutes.

Guns and Talks is the dubious American title for a South Korean action comedy about four freelance assassins whose lives get complicated when they get too interested in their assignments and their clients. This is just after a job that they completed for a local crime boss attracts the attention of a district attorney.

The first thing to catch my eye about this film was the cast. The group's leader, Sang-yeon, played by Shin Hyeon-Jun (Barefoot Ki-Bong, Kiss Me Kill Me), is primarily assisted by demolitions expert Jung-woo, played by one of my favorite actors, Shin Ha-Kyun (No Mercy For The Rude, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance), and firearms specialist Jae-young played by another favorite, Jeong Jae-Yeong (Welcome to Dongmakgol, Righteous Ties.) The fourth and youngest member of the group is Ha-yeon, Sang-yeon's little brother, and is played by Won Bin (in his first major film role.) Won Bin, of course, would later go on to star in great films like Tae Guk Gi, Mother, and most recently, The Man From Nowhere. The district attorney whose attention is focused on Sang-yeon is played by Jeong Jin-Yeong (Green Fish). (Writer's Note: With a cast like that, how could I not be interested?? All it would need is Choi Min Sik as a crime boss and Song Kang Ho as Jeong Jin-Yeong's supervisor or something and I wouldn't even care what the plot was about anymore. Ha ha!)

Early in the film we see the team kill a few people who can testify against a local crime boss who is currently in police custody. The kills are stylishly shot and pretty to look at, despite stretching the limits of believability a bit right out of the gate. (We were all disappointed as children to discover that we couldn't actually crawl around throughout the air duct system of buildings, it wasn't just me, right?) This effectively kills the case against the crime boss, which greatly upsets the district attorney over the case. The district attorney comes to the conclusion that the killings were not of the style that the crime boss or his men would employ and begins to investigate further, putting him on the trail of the group of assassins. Around this same time, a schoolgirl who has figured out what they do for a living begins brashly hounding the group to kill her teacher who is an ex-lover. Things are further complicated when Jung-woo is assigned to kill a pregnant young woman that he is attracted to, and Sang-yeon takes on a very public and dangerous contract despite all of the attention that is on the group from the police.

Let me put my cards on the table early. The assassin as protagonist angle has been done far too many times for its own good at this point. If real life assassins were kept as busy as they are in cinema, it wouldn't be long before there would be no population problem on this planet. Even the subcategory, if you can call it that, of assassins having a heart and falling in love has been overdone. This film is no exception. In fact, looking at this film with the same level of critique that I normally use on this blog, this film is not good. (Here's where I get to admit to being a bit of a hypocrite for all the times that I gripe about some really bad big budget American films being made up of some good scenes but too flawed to be worth watching.) I'm a bit of a sucker for that kind of thing though, especially in Korean cinema, and this film has some really fun scenes and such a gleeful attitude at times that I do enjoy it despite its many flaws.

Part of the film's humor is found in the unreliable narration by Won Bin's character, who is arguably the most immature of the group and occasionally has trouble expressing himself when speaking to the audience. What his character perceives and reports is sometimes different from what we are shown on the screen. This is particularly evident in one humorous scene where he is describing to viewers the outcome of a monologue he delivers about love to break up a fight between two other members of the group. While he describes the others as being moved to tears by his statements, in reality they are shaking with laughter at him, but have their backs turned so that he can't see it. Another major humor vehicle for the film is Jung-woo's impulsive actions and how easily the character is thrown off balance by the woman he is assigned to kill. While not exactly bumbling fools, the group does make their share of mistakes in the film, which is also amusing to varying degrees.

In my opinion, most of Guns and Talks features pretty typical lighting and cinematography, but it does have a few stylish shots up its sleeve. The scene in the opera house late in the film is particularly fun to watch, although again asks for a good deal of suspension of belief by viewers. There are occasional split screen shots to show montages of actions by characters in the film, that I generally find a bit distracting to watch although the specific scene featuring a brief home invasion wraps up rather nicely. There are also several nice little cinematic touches to some scenes that would otherwise be far more typical and boring to watch.

This is the third full length feature by director Jang Jin, who also wrote the film. I was rather surprised to discover in doing my research for this review that I was more familiar with Jang Jin than I thought I was. Of his other directorial work, I've also seen 2005's Murder, Take One (also starring Shin Ha-Kyun and Jeong Jae-Yeong), and 2006's Righteous Ties (again starring Jeong Jae-Yeong.) In addition, Jang Jin wrote the play for Welcome to Dongmakgol (the film version of which I can not recommend highly enough), the screenplays for The Man Who Went To Mars, and Public Enemy 3, among others. (It's interesting to see how many of these actors and directors worked together multiple times, I skipped over mentioning many other times they have crossed paths in writing this review, but if anyone is curious about it, feel free to ask.

Should you watch this film? That's up to you to decide. It has many flaws, not the least of which is how the film just seems to randomly culminate in an out-of-nowhere happily ever after style ending that leaves viewers scratching their heads. The script could also have used some more work, for certain. I get the feeling that maybe they had a few ideas for interesting scenes and then wrote the story around that, or something similar. Personally, I've watched it a few times now and do recommend that people give it a look as long as they don't expect a lot from the film. I do a bit of eye-rolling at times, of course, but I do like the film. Shin Ha-Kyun is always great to watch, and his presence alone makes the film a must see for me. Jeong Jae-Young is another favorite of mine who I think is perhaps, under appreciated by Western audiences. It's also interesting to see Won Bin's first major film acting role. Bin does a serviceable job in this film, and in my opinion he's continually improved with each role he taken on since.

English subtitled trailer, but image and sound quality is lacking.


There is better image quality on this trailer, but no English subtitles.


Thanks for reading. Comments are always welcome. =)

No Mercy For The Rude

>No Mercy For The Rude (2006)

113 Minutes. Cheol Hie Park, Director.

No Mercy For The Rude is a Korean film that tells the story of an assassin known as Killa, who is working to save up enough money to get a corrective surgical procedure. He was born with a short tongue, giving him a speech impediment, and is now too embarrassed to talk. Killa's two great passions in life are seafood and bullfighting. He loves to watch the bullfights on television and dreams of becoming a great matador one day and laments the fact that there are no bulls in Korea. He prefers to use knives for his killing, having originally been a chef, and only accepting jobs killing those he feels are rude men. As he draws near to his goal, he starts finding his life changing in unexpected ways. A woman (played by Yun Ji Hye and identified only as “She”) he meets in a bar comically forces her way into his life, and later a chance encounter with a rather pushy homeless child leads to Killa finding himself dealing with a sort of makeshift family. Then just as things seem to be coming together for all of them, a botched hit threatens everything.Killa is played by Shin Ha-Kyun, one of my favorite Korean actors, who also provides the narration for the film. This also provides some of the dark humor of the film as we see how things play out in a scene, while hearing a different version of events from Killa as he paints a picture that is more to his liking. He shines in this role as his character conveys much through facial expressions and many times even while wearing sunglasses obscuring his eyes. Shin Ha-Kyun seems to enjoy playing socially disadvantaged characters, having also played a mute character in Chan Wook-Park's Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and a man with a hairlip in My Brother. Both of those films are well worth checking out, in my opinion. And if you haven't seen Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance by now, I'm ashamed of you.

No Mercy For The Rude is confidently written and directed by Cheol-Hie Park, who's only other IMDB credit is for writing the Korean horror film, Face. (I have never seen Face, and never felt any particular desire to. Should I rectify this?) The film is stylishly shot, graphically violent at times, and very nice to look at. It has a great sense of atmosphere and setting, with nice establishing shots that provide excellent visuals. I love the film's set design, while not as elaborate and candy colored as something like Japan's Survive Style 5+, it still has some stunningly decorated restaurants and street scenes. It feels like it's post modern influences lay with Tarantino and at times the Coen Brothers, although it's hard not to also think of Chan Wook-Park's Vengeance trilogy because of Shin Ha-Kyun, as well as the setting. The film starts out very much like an action comedy and it progresses becomes more and more dramatic while still maintaining it's sense of dark comedy. Even at the tensest of moments, viewers will find themselves chuckling at little moments. The pacing of the film is excellent, never making you feel like it is dragging. Which is a nice change for me, as I often feel Korean films tend to be too long. (Although I usually can't identify the segments that I would cut from them to make those films run more smoothly. Go figure.)But what I feel really sets this film apart are the performances of the actors and the depth of the characters. The characters are all well developed and have back stories to explain their motivations and overall feel like real people. For example, all of the different men that are work as assassins with Killa are only assassins because they failed or were forced out of their original lines of work. One is a martial arts instructor who couldn't make ends meet, and another particularly likeable character is a former ballet dancer with a knee injury which forced him to give up the art he loved. Killa himself would be a matador or poet if he had his way, but circumstances have lead him to becoming an assassin. (The one chance that we get to see some of his poetry is sure to explain why that didn't work out very well for him.) The level of character development in the film helped me care about the characters more than I typically do in a film. When things start going wrong, I was more committed to the characters and their situation than I usually am, which ultimately raises my opinion of the film.As well as covering the ever popular theme of revenge, most evident in the results of the botched assassination mentioned earlier, the film also touches on themes of personal identity, self worth, and acceptance. Killa is too embarrassed to talk and isn't well educated, but dresses in all black, carries knives, wears sunglasses at night, and puts on the persona of a enigmatic bad ass. Sometimes this works for him and people are impressed by his presence, and other times he is ridiculed for it. One could take this theme even further and say that by Killa's decision to only kill those he considers to be rude and bad people that he is trying to justify his actions and maintain his personal identity as what he considers to be a good person, despite being a murderer for hire. Other characters in the film face similar struggles as they try to keep their flaws from showing and act like they are more than they are, much as people in real life often do. This really adds a nice element to the film, in my opinion, and makes it a bit more than it's relatively simple premise would have you believe.

I stumbled on this film basically by accident as I was going through Shin Ha-Kyun's films trying to see what I had missed of his. I am surprised that not many people seem to have seen or heard of it at all. Maybe because 2006 was a good year for Korean films it just got lost in the shuffle. (City of Violence, The Host, Kim Ki Duk's Time, Puzzle, Righteous Ties, I'm A Cyborg But That's Okay, and Arang all released that year as well.) I haven't been able to dig up much information on the topic beyond that it was released on August 24^th, 2006 on 52 screens in South Korea and took in a total of $904,802 through 2007. (By comparison, the BIG film that year was The Host, taking in a total of $13,019,740 through 2007. But that's hardly a comparison since roughly 25% of South Korea's population reportedly went to theaters to see The Host.)

I found this film really enjoyable, and think that people who may have enjoyed A Bittersweet Life, The Chaser, or Korean action and thriller films in general should check it out. I think this is the kind of film that might work as a good “conversion film” to use on friends who claim to not like foreign films, as it has a distinct look and flavor that should appeal to fans of Tarantino and his followers. Sadly, it's currently unavailable in Region 1, which is a shame as I think it'd be a relatively successful film for American audiences, but can be found at YesAsia.com and on eBay inexpensively. I truly hope that those who read this review do try to see it and let me know what you think.

Check out the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcfqXq9u60A

As always, comments are welcome! =)

Chaw (2009)

Chaw (2009) 121 Minutes. Jeong-won Shin, Director.


Chaw is a South Korean horror/dark comedy film about a man-eating boar terrorizing the small Korean village of Sammaeri. According to IMDB, it's only the second film from director Jeong-won Shin. I was unfamiliar with all of the cast except Yu-mi Jeong, whom I'd seen previously in A Bittersweet Life. What drew me to watch the film was the concept. Killer boar terrorizes village. Yep, I'm sold. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. I love old school monster movies. Unless Syfy makes it.

The film credits open with some rather disturbing and realistic looking footage of hunters trapping and killing animals in a series of quick flashes. I don't know if the footage is real or not, it certainly looks like it is. Once that bit of unpleasantness is out of the way (I'm not a fan of real animal violence AT ALL) the film starts with a man going to take a leak at the edge of a hill before tripping and falling face first into a dug open grave. He climbs out of the hole, clearly disturbed by this turn of events and is promptly attacked and drug away by the boar, who we don't see at this point. A classic beginning to a film that is essentially a Jaws knock-off. I mean that in a good way. I love Jaws, and I tend to enjoy Jaws knock-offs. And this one doesn't take itself too seriously.


From that point, we meet the typical cast of characters. The village chief, the retired hunter, the detective sent to investigate the killings, the new cop in town, and the big game hunter brought in to solve the problem. We are also treated to some strange villagers like an apparently insane woman who insists on being called “mother” and laughs maniacally at everyone, and an odd street urchin looking child who may or may not be her son. These characters have good development and interact well with each other.


One of the things that works in this movie, strangely enough, is it's humor. I'm kind of a hard sell for horror comedy. For years I resented Return of the Living Dead for making zombies funny. (Don't worry, I got over it. But, for the record, I like my zombies to be slow, hungry, mindless hordes.) But in this case the comedy and horror elements actually compliment each other pretty well. For some reason Tremors comes to mind, not in story, but in how the horror and comedy work within the story. Some of the humor in the film appears unintentional. For example, in one scene, a group of hunters comes to the village to help track down the boar. These hunters are supposed to be from Finland, yet speak English with VERY American accents. There is some physical humor in it as well. People are always falling down in this movie. Come to think of it, boars are always falling down in this movie too.


Visually the film is nice to look at. The forest is very pretty and I like the set design. There are a few action scenes where I didn't care for the filming style that the director chose to use, but that's a personal preference. The special effects in it are pretty solid, all things considered. The gore and blood effects are pretty typical of what I've seen out from Korean cinema. The boar sometimes looks a bit odd and not very menacing, but when they are showing it running through the forest and so on, the effects are good. It's usually the close up face and mouth shots where it looks computer generated. Bear in mind that I'm particularly picky about my CGI and am a big fan of practical effects, so I am probably making more of this than I should.

Interestingly, about 70% of Chaw was filmed in California near San Francisco, despite being a Korean production. Much of the film takes place in rural areas and it was much easier to secure permission to film in the California woods than it was to film in Korea. Many of the computer generated effects were also done here in the United States. From what I've been able to find out online, the effects crew spent two years developing the boar in the film.


Snakes feature prominently in two scenes of the film, in one instance it was a computer generated one that looked rather weak. I think they would have us believe it was a Mamushi Viper that you were seeing although it looked more like a variety of rat snake to me. The other one, which was presented in the story as being a venomous snake looked like it may be a Cooks Tree Boa or something in the smaller tree boa family. I realize this probably doesn't matter to anybody but me. I have been around reptiles most of my life, and find it really annoying when a film tries to show me one snake and tell me it's another one. At least the film makers in this case used a less common snake for their “deadly snake” than a lot of films do. I've lost count of the number of films where some deadly snake that kills you in seconds is portrayed by a corn snake or boa constrictor. Even the cover of Anaconda 3 (which I've never seen and have no desire to) has a bunch of ball pythons on the cover and the main snake being featured is a Burmese Python with something looking like a computer generated rat head tacked onto it. Completely ridiculous, but I digress...


This film can't help but draw comparisons to Jaws, as I mentioned above, and the Australian film Razorback, which it's particularly reminiscent of in the final act. I've also heard of an American film called Pig Hunt, which I've not seen, and have heard this compared to as well. From what I can tell, they are very different films though, and the only real comparison to be found in it is that both involve killer pigs.


Chaw is a very fun film and I highly recommend that you guys give it a watch if you get a chance. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. So many really bad monster movies come out, it's always a good thing when one like this comes along, in my opinion.

As always, comments are welcome!

(I finally got a chance to write a new review! Thanks for the patience everyone!)