City of Violence (2006)

Directed by Seung-wan Ryoo
Written by Jeong-min Kim & Won-jae Lee & Seung-wan Ryoo

After Oldboy, I'm always interested to see what's coming out of Korea, and when this film hit Blockbuster I rented it but never had the chance to watch it. Now that I finally did, I'm impressed. The storyline is not too different from Oldboy, by watching these two revenge movies from South Korea, you can tell that childhood friendship plays a big part in the lives of the people there, and often affects who they are when they grow up.

I won't bother with story details here, there are far too many, and the characters are far too confusing to be told quickly what's going on, not to mention you could probably watch this movie without subtitles and still enjoy it. On that level, that's where the story impressed me, because usually with action fare like this, I could care less about the storyline, I mean, Ong Bak is one of my favorite martial arts films, and the story could be a saturday morning cartoon.

Still, it's not often you get to see Tae Kwon Do done in this type of setting, shot this stylishly (almost too stylish), with a great soundtrack to boot. Due to the visual style, and the type of music played, I can tell why people are calling this director the "Korean Tarantino", although I disagree completely. He's more of an HK-style director, more like Wilson Yip, but I suppose nobody would know who that was if they said that in their little blurb. Anyway, this film has some well paced fight scenes, and when it comes down to the finale, there are two sequences that tie together to become very "House of Blue Leaves"-esque. Oh, and the suits. Can't forget the Tarantino-y suits.

Still, this movie carves itself a niche in the martial arts world as something different, something new, and something entertaining. The actors are all very good, it's hard to impress me across language barriers, but they all did a good job of that. Also, side note, they do flashbacks to when the group of friends was young, and it was the first time in an Asian movie from any country, that I was able to tell who was supposed to be who just by looking at the two actors. [/racism]

It gets points for its action, its labyrinth storyline, and more than anything else, its good acting. I was really impressed, usually martial arts films leave acting behind and go for balls out action, which this film does at a point, but in the Donnie Yen style, it still has some substance beyond the kung fu action.

7.9/10