Fly Away

Director: Ji Woon Kim
Actors: Kang Ho Song, Byung Hun Lee, Woosung Jung

Genre: Action, Comedy, Western
wh"Y"-Rate: ****

This movie came out last summer when I was in Korea. After I saw the trailer, I really wanted to see the entire movie. But because it was so popular and too many people wanted to see it, the tickets were all sold out even after my flight day. So I returned home in NY, U.S., a country about 21 flight hours away from Korea, sad because I couldn't stay longer, sad because I didn't want to leave my family, relatives and friends, and sad because I couldn't see this movie. BUT. recently as I was going through my dad's laptop looking for my files, I found this movie downloaded on his laptop. Next thing you know, I was blissfully running up the staircase to my room to get my usb and transfer it to my laptop and watch it.

As I expected, although I didn't know much about it, the movie was awesome. The plot was not so conventional (because I don't usually watch western, cowboy, traditional movies xP), but it was still very funny and thorough. One thing I realized, however, is that when I watch Korean movies, I don't think about the film techniques and other features as much as I do when I watch American or other European style movies.

The plot of this movie was somewhat ridiculously imaginative or traditional you could say. There were these three guys looking for a treasure map, and the three guys all knew each other somehow. One of them was called "the bad" guy because he shows no mercy whatsoever when he is mad and kills anyone who gets on his nerves. The other is called "the good" guy because he pursues after the goodness of this world and tries to get rid of the people who cuase chaos or bad things (so after all he isn't really "good" good because he also kills people...). The last one is "the weird" guy for he looks weird, thinks weird and...he's just weird in general. This guy was the funniest. He says things that were so unexpected and says it at such unexpected, random moments, and it's just hilarious. So these three guys, whether they were asked to do it as a favor, paid to do it or were just yearning for money, collide with each other and later meet the dead end--all three face each other right at the spot where the treasure is supposed to be.

In the end, they have a shooting contest, a very weird shooting contest suggested by the weird one. They stand in a triangular shape and shoot each other until only one survives. yeah very...weird. So the weird one survies but he ends up getting caught by the people and finds no treasure and the movie ends.

At one point of the movie, the good and the weird get closer to each other and they become friends in search for the bad and the treasure map. When they were sleeping outside the camp the good asks what the weird wants with his life, and the weird gives an answer that sort of makes him seem like Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men: he says, "I just wanna go away and live in a farm with pigs, cows, rabbits and all the other animals." This could portray the weird as somewhat nice and good, but later it is revealed that the weird cut the bad's fingers with knife and yeah. He's not so good.

So this movie, although titled "the good, the bad, and the weird", only had characters who were evil and bad. It was still hilarious though! :P