Reviews

I didn't see any trailers of this. I saw it at the DVD store, had a free coupon, figured it would be fun to watch Hugh Grant do a Simon Cowell impression, so I rented it. Lame, lame, lame. I'm embarrassed that I even watched it now. Of course, a white Pakistani from the "Middle East" on a mission to suicide bomb American Idol. Er, "Dreamz". So much potential wasted with the scenes with the president and Cheney, so much potential to make more fun of the judges and participants of American Idol, so much potential to jack up and darken the terrorist aspect. However, all sanitized, dumbed down, politically corrected, and predictable, the only part moderately entertaining was Omar spending nights in the terrorist camp. The The rest, of the time, the attempted jokes fell flat, you couldn't laugh at this thing on Nitrous Oxide. Unfunny, and a complete utter waste of time.

I picked up this movie channel surfing the other night and expected it to last until 2am. Much to my personal regret, it went past 3am, and I want my time back.

I caught it from around the beginning and thought it was a Japanese movie somehow on the foreign movie channel - Japanese actors, Japanese dialog (even though the lead still had a bit of an accent). Watching this movie as someone who lives in Tokyo, it was interesting visually to see the Korean take on a "Japanese City" and "Japanese Police" (the "JBI" - gotta love it). I really love the visual style of Korean movies and videos, and have enjoyed more than a few Korean movies (and I have to say, Japan produces a fair too many clunker movies, Korea has a better strike rate).

I'll give the movie credit for being intriguing (you get hooked in wondering "what is this") and even giving an interesting story. Setting aside wetting my pants at the Japanese stereotypes that come through (nationalistic, cold, emotionless, particularly enjoyed his partner wearing kimono on his time off, having a huge house with a rock garden, and a subservient wife who bows and doesn't talk back - oh I WISH!), I was rather looking forward to the stylized action sequences.

This is where I was let down. Now pardon me if I'm wrong, but Mr. Hero is standing here in front of 6 masked bad guys letting off a hail of Uzi fire, yet he seems to find 5 minutes to drop his gun and tearfully look at children/ friends/ loved ones falling over in slow motion as violin music cuts in over the background.

Honestly, can one person here who liked this movie honestly say they actually forgot that the guy is surrounded by guys with machine guns and was pulled into any kind of emotion by the violin music? The nationalism bugged me (just as it would for a Japanese movie) but I know this is the Korean style, so it didn't bother me too much. But honestly, unless you are a hardcore fan of Korean cinema style, I wouldn't bother with this - there are much better examples out there.