AThames

This was an interesting movie.

This is a tale of tragic romance, where the male character is an emotional wreck (due to him being a slave for his sister and her husband, who also forces him to have a little experience with incest), and the female character is living her day in an opium cloud.

The acting from the main actors is top notch, namely Leslie Cheung and Li Gong, who always seem to deliver in every movie I have seen them in (Li Gong struggles a bit in her English speaking roles, and it does take something away from her performance in those movies, I must admit). Li Gong usually plays an intelligent character, but here she is an opium addict, so it is definitely different seeing her looking all confused and dumbfounded all the time.

The cinematography was spectacular, as it usually is when Christopher Doyle is in charge. The lighting and camera angles reminded me a little of David Lynch, and I believe it was done this way in order for you to see the world like you had smoked opium, just like the characters. You should see the movie for the acting, cinematography and camera work alone.

The main critique of the movie seems to be that it is very hard to follow the plot and figure out who is who. I agree with this. It gets established 40 min or so into the movie, but you could be tempted to turn off the movie before that because it is so confusing. But once it gets established who is who, and what they want, the plot becomes a lot better, and I became very involved in the movie.

This was a trippy movie. As with all Ki-duk Kim movies the cinematography was stunning, and the music really added to the movie. This is the second film of his I have seen where the main character doesn't utter a single word. But that doesn't take anything away from the amazing performance Jung Suh put on, as the very mysterious and sometimes scary clerk/prostitute. She genuinely gave me the chills at some points in the movie. I read that a lot of the audience walked out from this movie because of the violence that was on display. It did make me cringe a little, but I felt it was very relevant to the movie. There has also been complains about animal cruelty, specifically hacking a live fish into pieces. It didn't bother me none, it wasn't torture.

The movie deals with depression and loneliness, but in a very original way. You as a viewer are made to make a lot of the conclusions yourself, and I like that. It is not a popcorn movie, and like his other films there isn't really a plot. But it is still a very good movie, and it kept me entertained until the end, and left me with a lot to think about. Something I value in a movie.

I can see this movie has received very mixed reviews. A lot of IMDb users hates it with a passion, a lot think that it's mediocre, and some loves it. All critics loves it. I was personally loving it during the beginning. The intro song was not the best ever, but it was okay. The intro scenes however were awesome. The action scenes in the beginning were awesome as well, especially the chase scene. The cinematography and soundtrack was great as well. Very beautiful shots of the cities(especially London, felt very "londonish") and landscape. Some of the still shots of Bond were a bit melodramatic but beautiful as well, also; clichées are allowed in a Bond movie (well done clichées that is). The villain was great as well (Javier Bardem is up there as one of the greatest villain actors ever). Overall, the acting was very good.

Now for the bad stuff. The story was a bit weak. I can accept that Bond is pushing the boundaries of realism, but why did he need to get shot, fall 100 feet, land on his back in the water, then get sucked in to a waterfall? It makes no sense. If he just got shot and passed out, and fell 10 feet or something like that, it had been much more acceptable. Not that it matters a lot, but it does bug me a little. I also know that hacking is the new magic in Hollywood, but it became a bit ridiculous in this movie. They should start to become a bit more aware of the fact that the audience is getting more knowledgeable about computers, programming etc. There is no need to present "hacking" as some kind of magic universe where everything is possible, like presenting the hackers monitor as some kind of visual labyrinth in which you need to maneuver through an orb of 1's and 0's, or the annoying "the faster you type, the better you are hacking" rule etc. Some of the characters were also a bit weak. The bond girl in particular, what was up with that?

All in all a good movie, but with some annoying little flaws.