THE LAST STAND

(Kim Ji Woon, 2013)

Its always a bit of a problem when your leading man can't act. And Arnold Schwarzenegger can't. Never could. Not only that; he's not even remotely convincing as any sort of normal human being. There is a shot of him walking down the street like some normal joe in True Lies which is just hilarious because his persona is so exaggeratedly superhuman, so effortlessly larger-than-life; when he wants to break out of that, he'll always struggle, even after years away from movies.
And that is the case with Kim Ji-woon's The Last Stand, an old-fashioned modern Western with a High Noon-esque concept at its heart: theres a very bad guy coming, and the sheriff of a small Texan town is damn sure gonna stop him. Schwarzenegger portrays that Sheriff, and for all the attempts to play his ageing, wrinkled cragginess in a wryly reflective Eastwood manner, he doesn't have the range or presence to sell even this character. From the moment he shows up, you wait for the shooting to start. Because that is what he's good at. And so it proves here.
Clever directors - including James Cameron, Walter Hill, John Milius and John McTiernan - have made use of Schwarzenegger's odd appeal in films, casting him as taciturn killers and stoic warriors, but here he has to emote on a few occasions, and each time it is truly painful to watch the gears crank under the surface of his face while he tries unsuccessfully to evoke pain or regret or angst. His voice is another problem - that voice like an ocean liner scraping against a coral reef, his accent as robotic and emotionless as ever - and it renders every line identical in tone and feeling. Whereas in the action scenes he sets his jaw and narrows his eyes and makes those familiar guttural noises of fury and agony and all seems right in this particular corner of the cinematic world.
This film is an odd choice for Kim Ji-woon's first Hollywood production. Yes, it showcases his ability to orchestrate big action sequences, but the script is all about efficiency and has none of the dark grace notes of his best Korean work (A Bittersweet Life, say). The characters here are reliably one-noted and cliched and there are far too many of them, with Schwarzenegger backed by a superfluous and inexhaustible host of deputies and townspeople, including such stock figures as "the young deputy who wants more action away from his smalltown home but is unprepared for it when it comes" (Zach Gilford), the "town eccentric there purely for comic relief" (Johnny Knoxville)  and the "quirkily demented, unpredictably violent bad guy" (Peter Stormare). Most of the dialogue is awful, the performances at a corresponding level but a couple of good action sequences just about make it worthwhile.
The first of those is a nocturnal firefight between the lawmen and some militia gunmen, interrupted by Schwarzenegger showing up and killing a bunch of bad guys with a shotgun and a jeep, the second a visceral car chase through a cornfield which is nicely, vividly textured and the third is a fistfight on a bridge which is half WWE, half The Big Country. Those three suggest that The Last Stand relies on traditional action beats for its appeal, and that is undoubtedly true. A decent cast is wasted, the gags are weak throughout, and the attempts at actual drama are inept.
This is, frankly, a film for undemanding action fans and nobody else.

I SAW THE DEVIL

(Kim Ji-Woon, 2010)

Trust Korean cinema to produce a Serial Killer Thriller so unflinchingly brutal, intense and disturbing that it had to be cut for release in Korea itself. Unlike much recent Korean genre cinema, I Saw the Devil is tonally consistent. It is dark, mournful, frightening, and bristles with tension throughout.
The set-up is simple; a serial killer abducts and murders a young woman. Her fiancee is a Government Agent, and he tracks down the killer and begins a sort of game; beating and mutilating him, then releasing him before capturing, beating and mutilating him again. The question is: what happens when the serial killer gains the upper hand?
Kim Ji-Woon is a great pulp director, capable of composing scintillating action sequences, and there are a couple of terrific examples of that talent here. But he has been indulged somewhat both here and in his previous film, the messy if entertaining Western pastiche of The Good, the Bad and the Weird, and this film runs 140 minutes, at least 50 minutes longer than it needs to. That running time allows for a very deliberate pace, however, and scenes are allowed to breathe, tension seeping into the film gradually at certain points and exploding into savage violence. And it is savage; limbs and heads are lopped off, genitals hammered, stabbings and sashings are graphic and bloody.
The length also allows for a rambling story; an interlude with the serial killer's cannibal pal is particularly black-humoured and visceral. All this displays the quality of Ji-Woon's work; a startlingly precise command of texture and tone, visual muscle and sensitive collaboration with actors. Of course it helps that his leads are two of the biggest stars in Asian cinema; Choi Min-Sik and Lee Byung-Hun, both of whom are excellent here. They have something beyond genre cliches to chew on due to the first act, which is surprisingly emotional in it's portrayal of murder and the emotional trauma it causes, and which haunts the rest of the film, driving the action and the plot.
It should be a little excessive, and perhaps it is. It is certainly overlong. But it is tremendously well-made and brilliant in places; gripping, exciting and never remotely dull.