Tyubeu

Korean cinema of late has produced some highly entertaining and diverting pieces of work. Sadly this film is not amongst them. From the opening scene when about 4 bad guys manage to gun down about half the Korean police force but don't sustain any injuries themselves, you know that you should have your tongue firmly planted in your cheek. The problem with this film is that there is no character development and it relies on action set-pieces to carry the film along. Some of these are OK, but many are just not believable. In the Making Of documentary on the DVD release, it says that the film was 5 years in the making. It's a pity that over that length of time, no one realized that the script needed a complete rewrite.

I never heard of this movie when I rented it, and I had no idea which country it was from. Heh, i didn't bother reading the DVD cover. I thought it was Japanese, as it had that look, but the writing was a little off. Regardless, it's a South Korean actioner, that stylistically had some nice moments, but this film did not know when to quit.

Basically, two bad guys take over a train, and hold the country ransom. A renegade detective who is has a past with the main bad guy, must work with the police and the rail system to try and save the hostages. The Korean equivalent to 'Under Siege 2'! From the opening scene, where the main villain somehow manages to thwart the entire police force unscathed, this is a hard film to take seriously! Not only is it fairly confusing as to what character did what to the other in the past, it has moments where you don't quite know what happened to the characters. Did some of the passengers of the train get killed during that huge shootout? Why didn't the hostages in the main carriage escape during the first big macho fight between protagonist and antagonist? Little things like that! Oh, and then a sub-character and his colleagues seem to take two thirds of the movie to re-act to that sub-character's love interest being one of the hostages? Oh, and the police force don't seem to acknowledge any loss of life when planning their next move. But the main problem I had with this film, is that it was climax overkill. Every time, our hero seemed to stop something bad from happening, there was another introduction of a plot element that wasn't established. Trains almost colliding with each other, and the pressure is on the technical staff! The hero manages to thwart the train's weight making a bridge collapse with it's obstacles, then has to stop a bomb, and fight a bad guy (again, with obstacles), then the next plot point is introduced, and the other heroes have to divert the train from hitting a nuclear plant (ala obstacles). And then there is yet another climax after that. Like one reviewer noted, all you needed was something to hold down the weight of the lever in regard to that one! I was getting really bored of this movie towards the end. Plus, there a pointless scene where the hostages stand up to the bad guy, and it could have been totally cut, and it didn't furthur the plot at all. It was totally unnecessary cause it didn't add to the story thematically, or provide anything to the plot! That pretty much sums up how 'Tube' keeps piling unnecessary climatic moments, and it really over-kills the climax factor basically because they forgot to introduce many of the main elements beforehand (i.e. the rigged train to explode, and subsequent numerous bombs)! 'Tube' is not a very good movie!

** out of *****!

TUBE (2003): While I can't highly recommend it, it is kind of fun, provided you don't think too much about the plot, which has a walking stereotype loose-canon cop (Kim Seok-hoon) battling a terrorist (Pak Sang-min) onboard a hijacked subway train. The terrorist is a former government eraser that the government tried, but failed, to erase, and he's taken the train, and Seoul's mayor, hostage to uhh, well, to apparently have the plan be doomed from the start. Equal parts SPEED, TAKING OF PELHAM 123, MONEY TRAIN and DIE HARD, the film has few pretensions, which make it easy on the derriere. Poor Bae Doo-na gets one of the stranger film roles in film history, as a pickpocket who apparently knows she must LOVE the hero even before she KNOWS the hero, and creates all the necessary Korean histrionics along the way (as well as almost bearing more physical brutality than the hero!) while our glowering protagonist poses with a series of unlit cigarettes in his mouth (and which only one person will ever be allowed to light, care to guess who?). The SPEED and TAKING OF PELHAM allusions are apt, as are slight nods to MONEY TRAIN (the hero's boss does his best crazy Robert Blake impersonation) and DIE HARD (or UNDER SIEGE 2 if you'd rather, since it's so blatantly name-checked on the U.S. package), but overall it's a victim of it's own weak (and often downright ridiculous) logic and begs a few too many questions. The lovely Bae Doo-na plays one of the most strangely motivated characters I've ever seen in a motion picture. Production wise, though, it's delivers the goods, with slick production values all the way, with some nicely handled chase and fight scenes. Turns out, if I read the docu-stuff on the Korean 2-disc set correctly, that the Korean subway trains don't even look as hi-tech as they do here, and the ones in the film were almost entirely CG apart from the sets for close-ups! Columbia Tri-Star's sleeve is highly reminiscent of the art for TRANSPORTER and, not entirely unexpectedly, substitutes a generic Asian face for that of star Kim Seok-hoon. I give it a 4.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Cop Jay is intent on busting criminal mastermind .T.When he hi-jacks an underground train,he finds the perfect opportunity to make this happen.

This slow and overlong action thriller takes nearly two hours to tell a story that could have been wrapped in an hour and a half.For an action film,said action is not exactly in plentiful supply either.

It's intriguing (for me,anyway) and certainly very nice to catch a slice of Oriental action cinema,but when it's something so ultimately perfunctory and ordinary,it just ends up feeling so much more pointless.If you want to watch an action thriller set on board a train,rent Under Siege 2 with Steven Seagal,it's far superior.**

USA be warned, for South Korea is doing you shameful. Today it's possible to see a South Korea blockbuster that is at american level, and, most times, above it. The mood reminds us of "Speed", and is, at first look, a very close interpretation of it. But they had a great eye for spotting clichés, and soon you'll see what this means. It kick starts with an impressive shootout that makes Heat's centerpiece run for its money. It then heads the action to the subway and the fun begins, right until the formula-defying end. Technically, i's a triumph of Hollywood level. Artistically, it has too many real gems to be overlooked, and sometimes you'll be applauding what in american hands would be quite standard. The end section is quite surprising, at a point that no american movie would reach, because "it's not crowd pleasing". So wrong. It really is, and much more. Solid, fun fare, which proves that today the americans are not the only ones who make us thrill.