In what's being touted as South Korea's most expensive production to date ($17 million), three of that country's heartthrobs go on a nonstop, nonsensical action rampage that tears the screen apart and has the viewer cowering in the seat. It's not that "The Good, the Bad, the Weird" is scary, but its relentlessness and frenzied, go-for-broke pace evokes a certain terror. You want to get off the train. Failing that, you at least want it to slow down. But does director Jim Woon-Kim show any mercy (or mere common sense)? Hell no.
The story, the characters and while we're at it, the train (on which some of the action takes place) hurtle forward like a rickety roller coaster with a faulty brake system. That it all goes on for over two hours could only be attributed to Jim Woon-Kim's incredible stamina and apparent love for excess — the man behind ultraviolent Korean gangland films like "Bittersweet" favors lots of blood, lots of guns and fist fights galore orchestrated by the sounds of breaking bones.
In "The Good" Woon-Kim and his cast discard their usual Asian gang asethetics for outright laughs. The film has no pretenses — if you thought that the title sounded familiar, it's an unabashed homage (or reverential rip-off) of Sergio Leone's famed "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The story doesn't stray too far from it either; both films feature three bounty hunters hot on the pursuit of a treasure map. Leone, who pioneered the "spaghetti Western" genre, would probably have gotten a huge kick out of this kimchi Western — Woon-Kim pays Leone ample tribute while injecting his own originality and some wildly glorious inventiveness. In short, it's a wicked remake with tornado twists, and much more effective than "Jiango" the Japan-made sukiyaki Western that sadly fell flat on its face two years ago. In terms of sheer, calorie-fueled energy there's no comparison.