The Good, the Bad, The Weird (2008), a spaghetti...eastern?

There is a Mexican standoff. Three guys pointing at each other. Close-up of their faces, the tension is palpable in the atmosphere. The music of the soundtrack is full of guitars and trumpets.

But... wait. This is not Sad Hill Cemetery. We are in the Manchurian desert and the three gunmen who are going to shoot each other are three… Korean cowboys?.

How did we get to this nonsense?.
 

This is what happens when you give a Korean film buff carte blanche to film whatever he wants. And since the director Kim Jee-woon loves Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, what better idea than to transfer the genre to Asia. We don't have the Arizona desert, or even Almeria, but we can shoot in Manchuria, which has spectacular scenery. But that's in China, and 800 km / 500 miles away from Korea!. How do we place three Korean cowboys in China?.

The excuse is that the action takes place in the 1930s - months before the outbreak of World War II and when the Japanese Empire had invaded half of Asia -. That is why the huge amount of occupied territories functions as a single region and these people move through it with total freedom.

But that... doesn't make too much sense either!. Actually, there's tons of stuff from The Good, The Bad, The Weird that doesn't make sense. The villain has a rocker haircut and wears ear piercings. The madman uses a pair of Walther P-38 pistols that hadn't yet been invented for the time the movie takes place. The Japanese troops use Jeeps. The bad guy's henchmen wear dreadlocks and dress like something out of a Mad Max movie.

But why look for the fifth leg of the cat to a film that dazzles you from the first frame. The film oozes style. Leone's influence permeates the entire film, from the aerial shots to the stylized shootouts, from the music to the badass attitude of the protagonists. The new component is the ultraviolence, very Tarantinesque and full of grotesque or ridiculous deaths.

The basic model is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - three outlaws who are after a lost treasure and betray each other all the time -, but director Kim Jee-woon doesn't stop at homage or copying. In addition to Leone, he borrows ideas from Quentin Tarantino, George Lucas, George Miller and even Steven Spielberg. This is going to be epic, folks, an unforgettable experience and Kim Jee-woon is going to make sure of it.

For that he has three aces up his sleeve. The first is the villain - a bloodthirsty psychopath who loves to cut people into little pieces - played by Lee Byung-hun (The Magnificent Seven, Squid Game, RED 2, Terminator Genisys... and a list of credits as long as a phone book). This is a role that Lee Byung-hun can do even in his sleep, but here he enjoys it in great form. The bad guy is smart, brutal and sadistic. A nemesis that instills fear in those who dare to confront him.

He is confronted by an idiot: a clumsy, sympathetic, but no less violent thief played by Song Kang-ho (The Host, Parasite and a long list of credits in Korean cinema). The guy laughs all the time, wears an aviator cap and, with an unhinged look on his face, keeps slaughtering his rivals with his two pistols. By one of those jokes of destiny, it occurs to him to attack the train that the villain wants to plunder, and in which a Japanese officer is riding, carrying a map that marks the place where there is a treasure. Apparently the last Chinese emperor decided to hide all his wealth in a secret place in the middle of the Manchurian desert. Now the crazy crackpot has the map and the villain will not stop until he gets it.

And between these two is the good guy (Jung Woo-sung, less known internationally, but with many credits in Korean filmography such as Illang: The Wolf Brigade), who is an ace with a rifle. He's a bounty hunter who comes to capture the bad guy and the weird. Since he has a brutal aim, he can dispatch half of the villain's army in the massive shootout that takes place on the train.

The whole opening sequence - the train robbery, the shootings, the chases - already sells you the tone of the film, and makes you an accomplice of the director. No, it's not very coherent, there's no explanation of the scenario, but what the hell: what we just saw was great!. The lunatic escapes at full speed from the train and goes to take refuge in a clandestine town called the Ghost Market, a Mos Eisley-like nest of outlaws built in the middle of the desert and that looks like a fortress made of debris a la Mad Max. After the madman goes the bad guy, the good guy and a gang of Chinese outlaws who don't quite know what's going on, only that the nutcase must have something of great value to be chased by so many people. What follows is another brutal shootout in the middle of town, with the hero flying through the roofs, hanging from a rope and knocking off guys like crazy with his formidable handling of a lever-action Winchester rifle.

Did I mention there's also Don Lee / Ma Dong-seok (Train to Busan, Eternals), the Korean version of Bud Spencer?. The guy goes around with a sledgehammer ripping heads off and smashing guys out of windows. With one punch he embeds Song Kang-ho in the ceiling. That's how brutal it gets.

Of course this is not a traditional comedy. It's an action comedy, riddled with typically Tarantino-esque black humor. There are grotesque deaths like a couple of guys who end up getting stabbed in the ass. Or absurd situations, like when Song Kang-ho puts on a bronze diving helmet so that bullets bounce off his head in the middle of a gunfight. Just because bullets bounce off and don't hurt doesn't mean they don't stun you, so he wanders around like a drunk afterwards.

At one point there are so many people involved in the hunt for the map that, in the middle of the gigantic Manchurian desert scenery, the weird is chased by the villain, his henchmen, the Chinese bandits, the good guy and even the Japanese army, which does not hesitate to use heavy artillery to get rid of the competition. It's a Battle Royale of all against all, a mixture of Mad Max and Indiana Jones, with vehicles exploding, horses flying through the air or people hanging on the back of a Jeep launched at full speed, climbing at the last moment to kick the driver's ass and take control of the vehicle.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird is a delirium without waste. There isn't a dull moment, there isn't a sequence that doesn't surprise you, there isn't a murder that doesn't shock you or make you laugh. Song Kang-ho is a delightful anti-hero, less evil than Eli Wallach's Tuco, but no less amoral for that. Lee Byung-hun is Angel Eyes on steroids, a much more fearsome and relentless baddie. And Jung Woo-sung lacks the amorality of Eastwood's Man with No Name, which doesn't mean he's not a scary opponent when the bullets start whizzing through the air.

Very few people - except die-hard moviegoers - are aware of the film's existence. As the poster says, it's ridiculously funny. Until a while ago it was hidden in Prime Video's listings. This is a little gem that deserves to be rediscovered, an underrated action comedy that absolutely does not deserve to fall into oblivion.

Other reviews from April 2025:

• The Good, the Bad, The Weird (2008), a spaghetti...eastern? - Underrated Comedies
• G20 (2025), Viola McClane vs. the terrorists - Fresh Film Focus
• Holland (2025), another lousy Fargo clone - Fresh Film Focus

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