Tyubeu

This is from the producer of "Sheri" so I had high hopes for a good action packed over the top violent move. Nope.Very few action scenes and most are either underdone or over done.

Action freaks be warned this is more of a drama with a few action scenes.

This is a poor version of " under siege 2" with too much sappy story and not enough fighting.

A few enjoyable cliché scenes help but generally silly and not much of a heart tugger as it seems to be attempting to be.

The special effects are adequate.

The acting is generally passable to good.

The story is hole ridden and silly.

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.

In its core this is a pretty original action-flick from South Korea but the way the movie is brought to the screen is little original. It uses too elements from other, well known, action movies and does everything in a too formulaic way. which causes this movie to also be little surprising.

Seems like Baek Woon-Hak watched a bit too many Hollywood action movies such as "Heat", "Die Hard", "True Lies", "Speed" and whatever more movie to which this movie shows just a bit too many similarities. Nothing wrong of course with anyone from Korea or anywhere else trying to imitate Hollywood action movies but when its not done in an original way and merely just copies sequences and moments from well known movies, you simply just failed at trying to create anything interesting or original. Especially since this movie is just not as refined as an Hollywood action flick. The style is there but just not the right handling of it all. No matter how good the movie looks, it all feels quite amateur like and childish too at the same time. This is also due to the simple musical score (the composer listened to a bit too many Hans Zimmer scores) and overdone camera-work. You know, it's the Michael Bay sort of cinematography.

The movie also features some awkward humor- and characters that are supposed to be humorous, that also feels mostly out of place and is not consistent with the style of the movie. Think you can say that it downgrades this movies and makes it even harder to take it really as a serious attempt.

It's action is also a reason why this movie is hard to take serious. It's just too much. The movie is almost non-stop action and all of the sequences feel rather overdone and unbelievable. It seems to be unnecessarily hard and straight-forward, which goes at the expense of its credibility. I mean, the bad guys can basically shoot anyone, even a small army of heavily armored tactical units, even when they are right in the middle of them, without having to take really cover or worry about their ammo. Yeah of course, action movies are just never the most credible movies but you can also go too far in some cases. It's like a 12 year old kid wrote the script and had put in every action fantasy he ever had.

Non of the actors also really impresses and it's no surprise non of them really works regularly as an actor, though admittedly its perhaps not fair to judge the abilities an actor who speaks a language you don't. The characters all remain very flat, especially disappointingly also the villains, who normally always are the most fun, interesting and perhaps also most important in an action type of movie.

Korean cinema has better movies to offer than this.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

You don't get me containing my excitement too much for Hong Kong/Japanese/Korean action films. I see a name like John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat or Takeshi Kitano on a movie poster and I break into hives with anticipation. What makes these foreign films better or more appealing than their American counterparts you ask? Well, first and foremost is the style. Our friends from the East have a knack for action sequences. Check out the gunplay in films like Hard Boiled and Shiri and see their influences in the West with films like Face/Off and Heat.

So when the creators of Shiri reunited for a film about a cop on the trail of a madman who has taken over a speeding train, my heart began to pump uncontrollably and pestered my local DVD supplier continually for updates as to the film's North American Release.

The film I am referring is Tube. Directed by first timer Baek Woon-Hak and starring a multitude of hyphenated names that you wouldn't recognize, the movie was about a former assassin for the government that takes over a subway train to persuade his former boss and now mortal enemy to sacrifice his life for the lives of the innocents on board.

Putting a crink in the plans is a rogue cop who has been on the killers trail for many years, and who too is looking for payback for the death of his wife and the loss of a finger in an abbreviated altercation that took place some time in the past.

As demands are made and peaceful solutions examined, people are shot, ambushes are ordered and rail cars are blown up. Everything we would expect from a film of this genre.

It's too bad it doesn't work.

While watching Tube I wondered if the Director and Producers were sitting around one weekend watching American action films and tried to copy what they thought were the best parts from each. The premise is stripped from Under Siege 2 (and if you ever copy a Steven Segal film, you need your head checked), the opening sequence rips of Heat, an attempted rescue on the train was done better in Speed and even films like Apollo 13 and Stallone's Daylight look to have had their scenes stolen directly from the original screenplays.

But stealing from big budget films wasn't the only once noticeable Americanization of the film. Speeches are given when the characters should be acting or reacting to their situations and flashbacks are thrown in to stretch the running time. The soundtrack was overwhelming as is Hans Zimmer was vacationing in Tokyo and had nothing better to do than provide a repeating beat that would bound out of my subwoofer every time we see the train speeding down the track. Even the comic relief in the character of a thug that is handcuffed in one of the rail cars was straight from a Bruckheimer brainstorm. Whoa's me!

My excitement over the films release was quashed like a lake being thrown on a campfire. Everything that made these foreign films unique and pulse pounding was lost to what I can only assume was an attempt to puncture a hole in the lucrative North American video market. I could have cared less about the characters, I felt no attachment to the emotional attachment between the various couples and if you are just going to throw mindless action at me, well then, I hate to say it but give me a Michael Bay film. At least then I know what to expect and don't feel robbed of an afternoon.

www.gregsrants.com

Taking a dose from "Speed", "The Rock", and "Die Hard", the South Korean movie TUBE is just your average shoot'em up and blow'em up actioner. It takes its cues more from your average Hollywood summer fare, with an outrageous premise and a variety of cliches only possible in similar silly action movies.

TUBE has going for it an intriguing villain, but the hero is not quite so interesting, even if the film spends more than 25 of the first 30 minutes on his back story. The character of the girl who falls in love with the hero and basically stalks him around south Korea is a bit disturbing, mostly because it's so silly and unbelievably "kiddie" stuff.

Not to say that TUBE isn't a worthwhile movie. It has its share of exciting action set pieces, but for the most part the film lacks brain cells, which isn't much of a surprise for action movies. And yet, TUBE just doesn't seem to understand that criminal masterminds don't leave a spunky girl alive even after she's fouled up his plan for the 50th time. Outrageously silly.

5 out of 10