Very Good, It’s Not Bad, And Yes, It’s A Little Weird
The name of the film already suggests some kind of play on Eastwood’s classic The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly. If that’s what you were thinking, you would be right, as this film is in fact a western and it does feature three distinct parties representing each of those designations. But figuring out which person belongs to which category is actually part of the fun of the movie as I thought it was nicely hidden and somewhat slowly revealed. Not everyone is as they seem, in other words.
The Good, The Bad, & The Weird is directed by Ji-woon Kim and stars Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, and Woo-sung Jung. There are several smaller roles too of course, but these are your main three characters and they are all very interesting and entertaining. The plot revolves around a mysterious map that is said to lead to a vast treasure. The time frame is somewhere in the early 20th century and the film takes place in Manchuria.
The map is said to be aboard a passenger train and Park Chang-yi (Byung-hun Lee) and his bandit gang are intent on stealing it. Before they can bring the train to a stop and find the map, Yoon Tae-goo (Kang-ho Song) manages to get away with it and the chase is on. Over the course of the next two hours, expect thoroughly entertaining dialogue, gunfights, and chases. This film felt like a western blended with Indiana Jones.
So much goes right in The Good, The Bad, & The Weird it’s hard to find much fault with it. I loved the story, the characters, and the setting. The script was great, always managing to squeeze in a bit of humor with all of the intense action. The scenery and costumes were excellent, and my gosh, this film looks amazing on Blu-ray (more on that soon). Another reason I liked the film was that it never slowed down. That’s not to say the action didn’t slow down, but the movie never got bogged down in unnecessary scenes or sub-plots. It was constantly fresh, moving forward, and entertaining. The replay value is very high here.
If I were to nit-pick, I would point out that you can notice the ‘infinite ammo’ that the lead roles have. At times you see them reloading their guns, but, if you know much about firearms at all you can tell on several occasions that they’re shooting much more than they strictly should be able to. That’s being very nit-picky though, considering just about every movie, ever, does the same thing…
The Blu-ray
I was blown away at how good this movie looked on Blu-ray, seriously. The sheer technical quality of the image quality in this movie is up there with the very best Blu-rays I have seen. This is complimented by some gorgeous scenery and sets. As I watched this movie, I couldn’t remember the last time I took in the details of scenes as satisfyingly as in this movie. That’s a strong statement, certainly, but quite true.
The 5.1 audio track (Korean only) is also impressive. I thought some of the gun fire sounded a little underpowered, but at the same time ricochet shots sounded good. The film as a whole sounded excellent, with clear, normalized dialogue and a great score.
There are a few extra features included as well including the theatrical trailer, behind the scenes, Cannes highlight reel, two very short making of pieces, and interviews with the three main actors and the director. The features are in SD and overall pretty short, but, they’re interesting and worth a look.
To the summary…