Train robbers and bounty hunters, ricocheting bullets and bloody knife duels, desert ambushes and epic chases . . . the action never stops in Kim Jee Woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird.
A giddy mashup of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns and Lucas and Spielberg's Indiana Jones romps, this guns-a-blazing wide-screen Korean hit offers a nuttily staged, beautifully filmed, but kind of brainless homage to old-school Hollywood. (With new-school violence.)
Set in the 1930s in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, The Good, the Bad, the Weird stars Song Kang Ho as Tae Goo, an implacable thief who holds up a train, and comes away with a much sought-after treasure map. Those doing the sought-aftering include a sadistic, oil-slick-coiffed gang leader (Lee Byung Hun) and troops of the Japanese army. Following, and then allying with, Tae Goo is a Stetson-hatted bounty hunter (Jung Woo Sung) whose marksmanship and icy cool are both to be admired.
