Attack the Gas Station!

Two days back I watched a Korean flick named Attack the Gas Station!(1999) directed by Kim Sang-Jin. This was one of the biggest hits in Korea. This movie begins as four young Korean punks rip off a All Night Service Gas Station.

In this group of four there's a failed artist, a failed baseball player, the singer of a failed band and a failed bully. Their life is a dead end, and they're bored as hell. And so they decide to attack the same All Night Service Gas Station again. Why? Because it's fun. Because they can. Why not? They rob the station and take the owner and his teenage staff hostage. As the gang attends to the customers to keep all quiet, they realize that instead of just robbing the place, they can make even more money by keeping the money that the patrons give them for pumping their gas!

This is when the real fun starts. The way they treat the rude customers, the way they piss off the delivery boy and the way they beat up some high school punks.This leads to a big gang fight in the Climax and the way the director handles the group dynamics is great. The director has made great use of the limited locations used.

This flick had some really amazing performance by all the lead actors.The movie is very fun and mixes the Action/Drama/Comedy together real well. While some parts are a little silly and cheesy, and there are still goofs this makes for a nice movie to watch and keep in the collection one you could watch over and over and still be able to laugh. I definitely recommend to anyone who is a fan of crime capers, like Snatch and Pulp Ficiton.

My Rating: 3.5/5

A Tale of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon)

Yesterday at midnight I started to watch the Korean Horror Flick, A Tale of Two Sisters. The movie was going good but then after some time I got spooked and I turned off the monitor and went to bed. Then I watched the rest of the flick this afternoon.

The structure of this film is easily the most tightly constructed in the history of cinema. I can think of no other film where something vitally important occurs every other minute. Quite literally, Director Ji-woon Kim seems to have made a movie that practically taunts the viewer to dissect it on the most detailed of levels. A seemingly insignificant object may be shown – a rack of dresses, two diaries, a drop of blood emanating from a floor crack, a bottle of pills, etc. – but upon meticulous inspection turns out to be so much more – a clue that helps to make sense of that particular scene (or perhaps the movie in total), which almost always contributes a stirring reflection upon the psychological concepts that lurk in the background until the viewer's intelligence prompts them to spring to the forefront. Such an event might occur a handful of times during any other movie, but in A Tale of Two Sisters such events occur in such a rapid-fire, relentless fashion that the viewer must watch the film in a perpetual state of alertness, lest they miss something important. In other words, the content level of this film is enough to easily fill a dozen other films.

The direction is incredibly good, and the acting is stunning, with the step-mother in particular incredibly good swinging from one mood style to another in the film. The large house adds eeriness, and there are enough points in the film where you will jump out of your seat. This film to me clearly shows why Korean cinema is possibly the best most original in the world at the moment. You simply don't get anything like this in the Western World, sadly,and really i can see it being influential on film makers around the world in the next decade. This definitely is a must watch horror flick.

My Rating: 3.5/5