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| Bikes |
Having more or less caught up with all of the this past
summer’s major Korean releases, the first thing that comes to mind is that if I
ever see a motorbike in a Korean film again, it will be far, far too soon. The two main culprits in my eyes are Sector 7 and Quick, and the thing that they share in common is Yoon Je-kyoon, the producer who was also the director behind such hits as My Boss, My Hero (2001), Sex Is Zero (2002), Miracle on 1st Street (2007), and Haeundae (2009). Not too long ago I decided
to savage Sector 7 in my review as I
felt it was a disaster that needed to be called out for the contempt it showed
its audience, thinking moviegoers would be content with novel 3D effects at the
expense of a solid story and engaging characters. Thankfully spectators rejected the film as it suffered one
of the most calamitous post-opening weekend drops in Korean film history.
Quick is not as
bad a film but it does demonstrate a similar lack of respect towards its
viewers. What I mean to say is
that it’s an overburdened everything-but-the-kitchen-sink comedy-actioneer that
is designed to appeal to everyone but could never hope to satisfy anyone. There is very little that the
filmmakers didn’t throw in to the mix in a bid to attract viewers. There’s k-pop, gangsters, biker gangs,
youth violence, washboard abs, scantily clad women, inefficient police,
romance, and of course melodrama, all that in addition to the heavy doses of
action and comedy.
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| Flying bikes |
Gi-soo is a former bike gang leader who now works as a
speedy bike messenger. One day he
is sent to pick up Ah-rom, a major k-pop star, who turns out to be his
ex-girlfriend. She puts on his
helmet but while he was away, someone has put a bomb in it. Now he must do an unknown man’s bidding
with the police and an old rival on his tail.
Quick is primarily
an action film and it borrows its concept from the popular 90s Hollywood summer
blockbuster Speed (1994), starring Keanu
Reeves, it has more or less borrowed its name too. The action is relentless and the filmmakers cram in
pile-ups, explosions, and as much speed as they can into the narrative. I must say that the action sequences
are for the most part convincing but they are just variations on a theme and
don’t offer us anything we haven’t seen before. There’s also a tendency to blend the comedy in with the
action, these efforts, rather than add up to something better, mostly fall
flat.
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| Funny bikes |
Comedy is a large part of Quick but I think it was either a poor choice or badly handled as
it is the cause of most of the film’s many problems. It’s not particularly funny and, as I’ve already mentioned,
it doesn’t blend well with the action, but beyond that it poses two significant
issues. Since a lot of the film is
played for laughs, there is no real urgency and the stakes feel very low, a big
no-no for an action film. Secondly,
I found the two leads to be terrible, mainly because they have no comic
timing. I know that Lee Min-ki’s
new film Spellbound as been received
very enthusiastically but here he’s just a pretty face and his performance is
hamfisted but also very unbalanced, Gi-Soo never felt like a character. Kang Ye-won’s is not someone I was very
familiar with beforehand but I do recognize her from last year’s Hello Ghost and she seems to be a Yoon
Je-kyoon stalwart, this being the fourth film of his she has starred in. Again she is a pretty face who only
seems capable of overacting and her grating performance quickly overstays its
welcome.
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| Sexy bikes |
Quick does feel
like a missed opportunity though.
At times, with all the different factions facing off against eachother,
I felt this could have been like an anarchic Kim Sang-jin (Attack the Gas Station, 1999; Kick
the Moon, 2001) film but it’s far too consumerist and cynical to pull that
off. The film lacks a raison
d’être, it is merrily an excuse for fast vehicles and pyrotechnics but rather
than reinvent the genre or offer up an original style from its mise-en-scene,
it expects the money being thrown at the stunts and explosions to impress
rather than the way in which they are presented.
Forgive the bad pun but I think the film was made a little too quickly, elements designed to draw in viewers were thrown together, explosions
littered the marketing, numerous mid-level stars were cast in small roles but
at no point was any effort put into the story, the characters, or the style of
the film. What we’re left with
looks more like a drawn-out music video than a feature film and that is
definitely not what I go to the movies for.
★★☆☆☆
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| Money shot |
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