If you look at the above picture you might be thinking that you don’t remember this scene when you saw The Warriors. You would be completely wrong….no, just kidding! This is part of The City of Violence, a Korean action movie about Tae-su, a detective who goes back to his hometown to attend a funeral of one of his friends from school. He meets up with others and decides to investigate the death of his friend. He finds out that something is going on.
As the title suggest you are probably expecting some violence and this movie does deliver some of that. Tae-su, together with one of his friends has to fight a lot of gangs. One of them is a battle against break dancers, guys on BMXes and “the whole cast” of The Warriors another one is a scene which they have to get into the center of a tea house and where they are fighting against hundreds of men wielding swords. These action scenes are fun to watch and I really enjoyed them as the are quite dynamic.
Because the action scenes are so dynamic, but are unfortunately not very frequent, it’s up to the story to hold your attention between the action. Unfortunately it feels underdeveloped, making it feel like a throwback to eighties action movies. The acting isn’t comparable to those movies though as it is mostly convincing (although I didn’t think the bad guy was completely believable). Overall The City of Violence offers some exciting action and an OK story which manages to entertain enough to make its 90 minutes enjoyable. Just don’t expect something that will blow you away.
Score: 6
Trailer:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mRzbpQlUcM]
wow that sounds a bit too violent for little old me… ah who am I kidding sounds cool
Just when I was looking for the next Korean film to watch. Thanks. The story does sound very “basic” and a lot like an Indian movie, but the different gangs they have to fight sounds interesting. Thanks