The Essentials: The Films Of ‘The Last Stand’ Director Kim Jee-Woon

“A Bittersweet Life” (2005)
After the astronomical hometown success of “A Tale of Two Sisters,” it probably would have been pretty easy for Kim to make a string of horror movies, but instead, he turned his ambitions towards crime cinema, and came up with the astounding, ass-kicking “A Bittersweet Life.” The first of a string of collaborations with outrageously handsome Lee Byung-hun, who here plays a mob enforcer tasked with trailing (and possibly killing) the young girlfriend of his ruthless boss. When he refuses the task, he is hunted by not only his former boss but also a rival gang. Unrelentingly stylish (almost hypnotically so) and tense (epitomized by the scene where he squares off with a gunrunner to see who can assemble a gun the quickest), “A Bittersweet Life” is Jee-Woon’s magnum crime opus, full of blood and bullets and broken hearts. What’s so surprising about “A Bittersweet Life,” too, is how it shifts – it goes from being the John Travolta/Uma Thurman section of “Pulp Fiction” to the last act of “The Departed” at lightning speed, and doesn’t slow down to catch its breath (speaking of which, a sequence where they bury our “hero” alive will have you gasping for air). A nearly miraculous triumph that, for pure entertainment value and pop art sizzle, is almost incomparable. And after witnessing that command of the craft, it makes watching the new Kim Jee-woon action movie “The Last Stand” perplexing by how comparably anonymous it is. Meanwhile, the good name of “A Bittersweet Life” will be tainted in fresh ways soon enough – “Broken City” director Allen Hughes has his sights set on a remake. Somebody should whack that idea before it gets much further. [A]

“The Good, The Bad, The Weird” (2008)
Sure, Mr. Tarantino is getting all sorts of credit for his lively reinvention of the western with “Django Unchained,” but a few years ago Kim made a western just as explosively experimental. “The Good, The Bad, The Weird,” as the title suggests, is heavily indebted to the films of Sergio Leone, pitting three cowboys – The Good (Jung Woo-sung), The Bad (Lee Byung-hun with the most anachronistic haircut in any western ever) and The Weird (Song Kang-ho) in a race to locate and unearth hidden treasure in the deserts of Manchuria. (This loot also attracts the attention of Japanese and Russian governments, adding to the levels of danger and intrigue.) From a fairly straightforward premise (it’s literally a mad dash for a treasure map), Jee-Woon piles on the embellishments and embroidery, staging action sequences that are relentlessly and utterly real, beginning with the opening train heist sequence and including a number of jaw-dropping gunfights that feature more swinging than the last three “Spider-Man” movies combined. The movie climaxes with the ultimate reveal of what the treasure is (which makes perfect sense, if you only stop to think about it), one of the best twists in recent memory. “The Good, The Bad, The Weird” is a movie that is so wildly over-the-top, so crazily Kim Jee-woon-ian that a remake would be almost impossible. [B+]