Yesterday


Dir: Jeon Yun-su
Starring: Choi Min-Su, Kim Yoon-Jin, Kim Seung-Woo, Kim Seon-a

This proves Korea is just as good as America at making noisy, empty action movies, that forget about plot in the rush to blow things up and look cool. It takes about 80 minutes for anyone to explain approximately what's going on, and even this leaves large gaps in your comprehension. What seems to be the main gist is fallout from a secret government project to engineer young kids into killing machines: though long abandoned, the last test subject is now taking revenge on those he feels were responsible for the abuse he suffered.

It sure looks good, with the futuristic cityscapes well realised (especially given a budget of only US$5m) - though no reason is ever given why it needs to take place in 2020. And the action sequences, too, are nicely-handled. The problem is that they operate in a vacuum as far as storyline is concerned, with a plot that's badly written, jumbled and doesn't deliver on the potential inherent in the concept. The viewer is never given a reason to care about the characters, and at 124 minutes long, that's a lot of time to be apathetic. Chris quit before the end, finding the prospect of the fluffy pillow more alluring than that of the finale. I stayed till the bitter - and largely what you'd expect - end, but on the whole, wish I too had listened to the siren call of our bed.

D




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