The appropriation of Eastern themes into the Western is well established, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Rashomon having been remade as The Magnificent Seven and The Outrage respectively. It is perhaps less well known that these influences have long flowed in both directions, Kurosawa having acknowledged the debt of his own Yojimbo to George Stevens’ Shane, and making the astute observation that the Western was a genre which perpetually reinvented itself, made and remade “over and over again.”
Director Kim Ji-woon inverts those conventions yet flips the script again, firing a Korean narrative through the prism of Sergio Leone’s distinctly European understanding of perhaps the most iconic form of US cinema. The stylish central characters, attention to production detail, frantic set pieces and blood splattered ultra-violence which distinguished the Italian western from its homegrown predecessors are common to contemporary South Korean cinema, whatever the genre, and these conventions are well used here.
The action takes place in 1930s Manchuria, with the theft of a treasure map in a beautifully shot train robbery leading to a feverish chase through the desert by the three central characters; good bounty hunter Do-won, bad Chang-yi, a ruthless bandit working for a rich patron, and weird, inept thief Tae-goo, more than a match for Eli Wallach’s Tuco. The film is far from a straightforward pastiche however, with the stunning period design and framing coupled with quick fire editing and some jaw dropping choreography providing the momentum to push the narrative to its inevitable stand off.
Though the plot does skirt around the complexities of Korean national identity, it lacks Leone’s epic context, with the ineptitude of the Japanese army and Chang-Yi’s battle with rival gangs no match for the civil war sequences of the Dollar’s trilogy. Taken as an inventive action picture there’s plenty to enjoy in the film in its own right, especially for those whose thrills are found in knife fights and gunplay, kung fu and wire work, and the inevitable gore splattered camera.
Kingsley Marshall is an academic and journalist who lectures in film and contributes music and film criticism, features and reviews to Little White Lies, Shook and Big Screen magazines in the UK. He was appointed Technical Editor at Clash magazine in 2010, where he writes a technology and games column.