proving that style and sizzle does not a movie make

Rating: 3/10 (4 March 2006)

A movie without ideas or theme that is long on cinematic style (but then, so are MTV videos and most successful commercials) and short on recognizable human interest (unless you are a first-world adolescent, in which case you will idolize its sadomasochistic cool and eye candy, not to mention the fact that its emotional center appears to be high school). Let's not even talk about artistic merit. Quentin Tarantino (maker of one, perhaps two great movies and a couple of good entertainments) is the most obvious salesman for the view that pulp junk, polished up and translated by cinematic trickery and fascinated with its own pop cultural hipness, is valuable (and Tarantino was on the committee at Cannes that gave this film the Grand Jury Prize). Park steals here from some of the greats (film noir specialists like Hitchcock, absurdists like Bunuel, masters of cinema cool like Kubrick), but lacks any feeling for what made *their* movies worth seeing. Put simply, it lacks wit (unless by wit you only mean slapstick), and its ideas are like bad homilies no one understands. I keep encountering this in the newer Japanese and Korean and Hong Kong cinema that seems influenced by Tarantino: comic book themes and characters pass through high-polish celluloid/digital trickery and a ironic pop filter (all borrowed). I hear Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which I have but still haven't been able to force myself to sit through, is much the same. Avoid.