Thursday, April 19, 2012

Guns and Talks / <킬러들의 수다> 2001

Directed by: Jang Jin / 장진
Release date: October 2001

Four men run a lucrative enterprise, but not your ordinary business, they hire out as professional killers: Sang-yun lays the plans, Jung-woo is a specialist with bombs, Jae-young a skilled sniper, and Ha-yun is the electronics whiz. Neither are they your ordinary hit men: they are a quirky bunch who all live together and have family meetings about their next target. Police detective Cho gets a break in hunting them down and is hard on their trail. Then they take on what may be their final job, an impossible-to-pull-off public assassination, all to please a lady with a pretty face.

Not your ordinary hit men and not your usual action film, indeed not. This film is another of director Jang Jin’s contribution to his oeuvre of quirky comedies. It’s a long film (120 minutes) but it never gets boring. Jang’s visual and verbal humor just keeps on coming. And it never veers off into gross “bathroom” humor! Hurray! In my book, Jang Jin is a comic genius. The music and cinematography are pretty awesome as well, and the play within the film, snips from Hamlet, was gorgeously staged (perhaps a reference to director Jang's extensive stage directing experience?). 
My take: 5 stars! (I love the droll humor of Jang Jin!)
A high school student from the neighborhood drops by, she
wants her teacher knocked off. The four attempt, not very convincingly,
to convince her that they are not what they seem, that they don’t
kill people for a living (Jeong Jae-yeong, Sin Ha-gyoon,
Shin Hyeon-joon, Won Bin, and Kong Hyo-jin).

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