Tyubeu

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.**

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

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

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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.

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.