Carter

Editor: How many cuts & transitions do you want?

Director: Yes

Man! My head hurts and my eyes need some rest. Even though I do love these fast-paced action features, this turned out to be too much! I know and I understand that there would be some who have an undying appetite for such kinds of filmmaking, and that's fine, cause to each their own! But if you ask me, I could not enjoy the ride as much as I wished for.

Part of it is due to how turbulent & disorderly it had ultimately become! What was inaugurated as an inventive piece that comprises distinctive one-of-a-kind action, slowly turned itself into one tiring repetition. Add cheesy performances and a suboptimal write-up to that equation and we got ourselves a highly forgettable affair.

An absolute brilliant effort in cinematography and fight choreography, acting is perfectly adequate marriage with a typical action storyline.

High praise for what is visually presented it's wildly entertaining using creative action that plays comedic while never losing visceral impact.

If you love action films, this is your bag!

The entire film is shot and made in a way that makes it look like a one-shot long take. But you can notice that there were lots of cuts because there are like 85% of the actions that were pretty insane, so that would be extremely impossible to shoot one long take lol.

It was Hardcore Henry type movie that had more actions, only the editing was kinda poorly done. Lots of cheap green screens and CGI, but doesn't bother me anyway. The actions sequences were actually pretty insane and impressive, IMO. The camerawork is kinda cool, but some people might find it annoying.

Would have been one of the best action films if it was shot in 4-6 long takes without green screens, for sure. Overall, I liked it, it's quite unique. Except Hardcore Henry, I've never seen any movies like this one.

Carter was a style over substance dizzying 132 minutes of utter ridiculousness, ruined by horrible camerawork and a convoluted story. Huge props to lead actor Joo Won, all the skilled stuntmen, insanely choreographed action scenes and the great action set pieces and visuals, but sadly, all that effort was wasted on unwatchable dizzying, seizure-inducing, single-take-looking headache-inducing camera work - and just as bad editing. Had all the great action and fight scenes been shot normally - with tact, intelligence, and aim, this film's action could've topped the Mission Impossible films. But instead, it was like a drunk on meth, with one fancy camera drone trying to keep up with the action. Then add a decent conceptual story, that ended up being incoherent and tried too hard to be smart with convoluted twists, and drag it out with unnecessarily repetitive long action scenes - for over 2 hours. It was frustrating, exhausting, and a huge missed opportunity to be a great action film. If you want to see it done properly - with great action and a great story, watch The Roundup with Don Lee. Writer and director Byung-gil Jung needs to stick to basic camera work and lessen the overbearing dramatics, as well as work towards better story-telling - in under 2 hours.

The film isn't about the plot the politics or the acting. It's about the action. In and of itself, despite some wonky parts that are just not believable, the action is decent.

But the whole thing is ruined by the attempt at a constant one take attempt constantly jostled about by the shaky camera effect.

If you mixed Kingsman camera movement and spinning and pov changing with Blair witch project handheld shaky cam footage it would be the camera work on this movie.

Absolutely unbearable after a certain point while you're just trying to focus on the action scenes unfolding.

Its worth a try if you think you can withstand that. Otherwise it's hard on the eyes and brain with the constant camera shake.