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Reviews
Silmido (2003)
A disappointment
For a movie that was the most seen in its native South Korea for most of 2004, it was a huge disappointment. Shows that Hollywood is not the only place where people can make over-emotional, melodramatic movies. The film was over 130 minutes long but not a lot actually happened and everything that happened was pretty much what one expected, the plot was that transparent. Granted if one himself was Korean, one would perhaps get into it more, but for me it didn't do much anything. Suffice to say that as the case tends to be with Korean cinema, the plot revolves around the relationship between the northern and southern parts of the peninsula. South Korea decides to recruit and train an elite assassination squad from death-sentence prisoners to kill Kim Il-Sung.
A tedious plot doesn't bother me much if the characters are good but unfortunately that is not the case this time around either. They are stereotypes and most of the acting is mediocre and too often just over the top as it tends to be in Korean cinema. Too much time is spent on the numerous montages and the characters remain distant, one dimensional cardboard cuts. They should've spent more time establishing the characters and less showing us how tough and cruel the training and the soldiers are.
One thing it does remind us of, is that a lesser of two wrongs is still wrong.
The Black Dahlia (2006)
Kids making a mess of film noir
Don't bother. Brian de Palma's stab at film noir is a joke. A plot that is outrageous at best, needless convoluted and insipid at worst, acting that is either just plain dull or so over the top, I wonder if all of the crew were hyped on coke not to notice. Fiona Shaw is the worst perpetrator of them all with his two ridiculous scenes. She is usually at least decent but here she acts like a dog in heat. Hillary Swank isn't much better and she is horribly miscast as a seductress but I don't know if that is the worst casting decision they've taken in this movie since Scarlet Johansson is supposed to be a history major. I wonder if someone pulled a prank on them or if perhaps it was just a printing error.
Basically, the movie jumps from one scene to another in disjointed fashion, not paying any attention to the overall flow. There are two plots running side by side and knit together with the thinnest of threads and both have needless side tracks which just detract from the movie and should've been left on the cutting table. With the movie clocking in at 121 minutes, they could've shortened it with about twenty minutes, easily.