THE GOOD THE BAD THE WEIRD World Cinema

One might call director Kim Jee-woon’s stunning $10 million homage to Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone a kimchi Western The sixth film by the director of the cult favorite A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2003) and A BITTERSWEET LIFE (2005), THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD continues Kim’s South Korean box-office winning streak. The film boosts masterful high-speed action like you’ve never seen before: think STAGECOACH meets high-wire Jackie Chan meets THE ROAD WARRIOR. Tongue firmly in cheek, this comedy actioner is set on the Japanese-occupied Manchurian steppe in the 1930s as a bizarre trio of Korean exiles-The Good (Jung Woo-sung, a sharpshooting bounty hunter in a duster), The Bad (Lee Byung-hun, a wickedly handsome knife-throwing gang leader) and The Weird (Song Khang-ho, a two-fisted gun-slinging thief)-get their hands on a treasure map and then set off in hot pursuit of buried Qing dynasty loot. Kim’s exhilarating, escalating mayhem pits our three antiheroes against fast-moving trains, horses, trucks, motorcycles, Jeeps, explosions, Japanese and Chinese soldiers and Russian bandits . And, after all that, their final, existential showdown does not disappoint.