The problem is that the film doesn't really want to explore what this would really do to Byung-hun Lee's secret agent. It's not like Kim Jee-Woon, the director (best known for the chilling K-horror A Tale of Two Sisters), doesn't have time to delve into it. At 2 hours and 21 minutes it's almost a good hour longer than its Roger Corman-esque premise needs, but it only alludes to Lee's journey to the dark side when it suits it.
Instead the film plays out as a series of contrivances (one example (and there are many) is in the sketch above) strung together by fairly regular over-the-top moments of bloody mayhem. These sequences are fun enough, but you won't care whether anyone comes out of them alive.
The sole redeeming factor is Min-sik Choi's serial killer. (Why is he a serial killer? It's best not to start asking questions; you'll just get annoyed.) Choi seems to be tapping into his inner Lecter, which, in a film this problematic, is a blessed distraction. It's that, or fall asleep.
Overall: 3/10
Should be remade. It's a solid idea - just not so solid execution.
ReplyDeleteI like the sketch.
thats why he gave him the medicine that he poured down his throat, it was to keep him from shitting out the device or shitting in general for several days, thats why at the end when the killer discovers he has this device in him he goes to the pharmacy and starts drinking the laxitive to shit it out
ReplyDeleteI remember the exchange, but it sounded like a line that had been stuck in there because someone eventually thought to say: ''Um... There's a tiny flaw in your plan.'' It didn't sound fully thought out. But I could bear that flaw if there weren't at least a half-dozen others.
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