2009: Lost Memories...

Loved this film. It's a big budget action fest that puts most Hollywood drivel to shame. It looks stunning throughout and while it loses its way a little towards the end that's mostly down to the limitations of the running time. In a perfect world they would have cut it off at the 2 hour mark and then made a sequel. The rush job ending really deserves 90 minutes or so of its own to do justice to the characters involved and to tie up the plot neatly. I don't want to get too involved in the actual plot as I feel too much is given away in both the marketing campaign and the reviews - it would be nice if people could go into this blind and try and unravel the plot in the same way that Jang Dong-Gun's detective has to. What I will say is that it's set in the year 2009 in an alternate Korea where history took a decisive turn from our own. Japan sided with the Americans during WW2 and the atom bomb was dropped on Berlin. Korea is now all but a lost nation completely subjugated by Japan. There is a tiny underground movement trying it's best to fight the system, but most Koreans have forgotten their culture and are happy living in a prosperous Seoul under the Japanese flag. Masayuki Sakamoto (Jang Dong-Gun) is one such Korean - working for the Japanese Bureau of Investigation he and his Japanese partner do their best to stop the Hureisenjin terrorists and retain the status quo. As the film unfolds following a spectacular insurgent attack Sakamoto is drawn into an investigation that his superiors would prefer he left well alone... It's a long film that takes its time to develop the friendship between Sakamoto and his partner Shojiro Saigo (Toru Nakamura) and also drops in a mystery woman, Hye (Seo Jin-Ho) who seems to have a connection with Sakamoto that he doesn't understand. Add what the cop feels was a betrayal by his father and you get a choice plot filled with good old fashioned melodrama that wears John Woo's name on it's sleeve. The shoot outs, of which there are a fair few, are well done with a nice signature touch where a person will get hit with a single bullet (preferably in slow motion) before another six or seven guns are trained and let loose. The central shoot out in a Hureisenjin hideout seems to have been influenced by the 'over the rainbow' sequence in Face/Off and if anything tops it. I haven't actually seen a decent action flick in ages... I was obviously looking in the wrong country. [Music: Maiden]