There are some genres that one would think won’t work in east Asian cinema. You can have action, horror (yeah, especially horror), purbawara or even re-interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays (Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood ｢蜘蛛巣城｣ comes to mind). But westerns?

The Italians have their hold on the spaghetti western subgenre mostly because they can have 99% of their Italian cast playing Mexicans and having nearby countries like Spain to substitute arid desert landscapes, not to forgetting the beauty of dodgy dialogue dubbing. Anyway, I saw a Korean western last night, and no dubbing was involved.

To say that Kim Ji-woon was the pioneer of the oriental Western would be wrong somewhat. Japan’s got Sukiyaki Western Django ｢スキヤキ ウェスタン ジャンゴ｣ (which has Quentin Tarantino in it!) helmed by cult director Miike Takashi (Crows Zero, Ichii The Killer to name a couple) and even our northern neighbour has Tears Of The Black Tiger ｢ฟ้าทะลายโจร｣. I supposed we have one too although in my opinion one dream sequence segment in Labu Labi doesn’t really qualify it as a Malayan cowboy film. The Good The Bad The Weird ｢좋은 놈, 나쁜 놈, 이상한 놈｣ was a homage to Sergio Leone’s eponymous The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and you’d be forgiven if you felt the underlying plot of TGTBTW (let’s call it that – my fingers can’t be arsed to type the whole thing) had some similarity to the Italian film.

The story basically revolves around the three main characters (err… The Good, The Bad and The Weird) and a map that is supposedly a guide to Qing dynasty riches beyond imagination with Manchurian bandits and the Japanese army in hot pursuit. If you hadn’t known that the film was set in 1930s Manchuria, the landscape in the film does appear non-descript and you’d think that this was set in some fictitious anachronistic era in the east. The film has a nice pace to it and if onscreen violence (acceptable violence – to paraphrase the makers of Kick Ass) is your cup of tea, you won’t be disappointed.

Lee Byung-hun’s The Bad is one trigger (and knife)-happy badass and is a departure from his usual good guy image. I suppose the only weird thing in the story was that The Good (Jung Woo-song of ATHENA fame) was a cowboy. Can’t imagine many Koreans living in exile in Manchuria wearing stetsons armed with a Winchester. Then again, Byung-hun does sport an emo-styled Korean boyband coiffure that does seem commonplace in the 1930s, not. As for The Weird (Song Kang-ho – the vampire from The Thirst), despite his annoying dismeanour, the revelation of his true character at the end of the film was somewhat of a surprise. Talking about the end, you may well guess what the ‘Qing dynasty treasure’ annotated in the much sought after map really was, just before The Weird gets to it. No spinning camerawork at a cemetery, mind you.

TGTBTW is a good yarn (it was good enough to be a non-competing Official Selection at Cannes), and not too complicated for a nice weekend’s evening on the sofa with the family mates. Don’t forget the home-made popcorn.