Dead Man's Shoes review

 Number 518 on the top 1000 films of all time is Shane Meadow's 2004 revenge thriller: Dead Man's Shoes.

Richard (Paddy Considine) is a former paratrooper who returns to his hometown of Matlock, Derbyshire with one thing on his mind: revenge. In his absence, a group of petty crooks led by the psychotic Sonny (Gary Stretch) have been tormenting Richard's younger autistic brother Anthony (Toby Kebells.) Richard is a man out for revenge and you best stay out of his way.

Shane Meadows made this film on a tiny budget of 700k, but he made the best of his low-budget with this entertaining, but not amazing film. It was certainly a good watch, but definitely no worthy of a higher place on the top 1000 film list. Much of the violence happens off-screen, most of the camerawork is hand-held and Meadows filmed on location, all providing a good level of realism. In some ways, this film felt like a pre-cursor to Meadows' breakout directorial effort of This is England.

Paddy Considine is the only big name (although Toby Kebbells has gone onto big things) in Dead Man's Shoes and he did well enough with a relatively shallow character. He won an Empire Award for the role. There isn't much behind Richard's character other than vengeance. Who knows why he is wearing the gasmask when he is committing his crimes especially since the bad guys already know his identity? 

The crooks he aims to kill are similarly two-dimensional with Gary Stretch giving a somewhat campy portrayal of the big bad Sonny. Perhaps that's because Gary Stretch comes from a boxing rather than an acting background. Although maybe I'm just in the minority with this opinion as he was nominated for a British Independent Film Award. I think Toby Kebbells - in his film debut - was one of the better actors, which was reflected in his nomination for Best Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards.

Paddy Considine also co-wrote the script with Shane Meadows and screen-writer Paul Fraser. I call it a script, it was more a general outline with much of the drama and dialogue being improvised by the actors. Perhaps that's why some of the dialogue was so damn cheesy. I'm thinking about the end where Richard started talking about beasts and monsters.

Speaking of the ending, for once I managed to actually guess the twist. I'm not sure if that's a reflection of my own lack of intelligence or the predictable nature of the film. 

*spoilers*

Maybe this isn't a spoiler if you're smarter than me, but it is revealed that Anthony was driven to suicide by the gang's bullying. The earlier scenes where we see Richard speaking with his brother? He is talking to his brother's ghost. I don't have much problem with the twist itself, but the execution was strange. Anthony was tormented by a group of six bullies until it's revealed that there is a secret seventh one who stood by as an unwilling participant. This man Richard aims to kill last. I found this strange. Sonny was the ringleader. We see how sadistic he was, not just to Anthony, but to everybody. Why wouldn't Richard save him for last?

The undeveloped characters, cheesy writing and strange ending aside, I ultimately did enjoy Dead Man's Shoes. It just shows you don't need a Hollywood budget to make an entertaining film.

I saw the Devil review

 Number 462 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Korean action-thriller 'I saw the Devil.'

Kim Soo-Hyun  (Lee Byung-Hun) is an NIS agent whose fiancee Joo-yun is brutally murdered. Soo-hyun swears revenge on her murderer - the sadistic Jang Kyung-Chul (Choi Min-Sik.)

I've seen quite a few Korean films since starting this list and I think it's fair to say that Korea is the America of the Asian film world. Nothing is done by half-measure. Everything is over-the-top and ridiculous. There is no subtlety. Just larger-than-life plots and daft plot developments.

This was certainly true for I saw the Devil which was a textbook example of horrible people being horrible to each other in particularly horrible ways. There was a lot of violence and most of it was completely gratuitous. I Saw the Devil was a film that could have left a lot more up to the imagination. It was a difficult watch.

Perhaps that's because we didn't really have a main character to root for. Soo-Hyun is supposed to be the antihero type, but his dogged determination to sadistically torture Kyung-Chul blurred the line between anti-hero and villain, but more in favour of the villain. Sure Kyung-Chul was a despicable killer, but Soo-Hyun was supposed to be better than him. He isn't though, least of all, because of his silly decisions to catch him, torture him, set him free and then repeat this process over and over again. This is all well and good, but it allows Kyung-Chul to kill more innocent people - he almost rapes and murders a schoolgirl.

I know revenge is a dish best served cold, but this seemed beyond stupid. Not to mention dangerous to Soo-Hyun and his family. Surely he would know by repeatedly catching and setting Kyung-Chul free, he is putting their lives at risk?

Spoilers

Speaking of loved ones, the film concludes with Soo-Hyun manufacturing a reunion between Kyung-Chul and his estranged parents and son, only to have him killed right in front of them. Yes, Kyung-Chul was a vicious killer, but what did his family do to deserve seeing something so traumatic? It was stupid and unnecessarily cruel.

Lee Byung-Hun is best known to international audiences as the Front Man in the hit series Squid Game. And Choi Min-Sik has also starred in the famous Vengeance trilogy. Both of them are great actors in their own ways, but here their characters were little more than soulless, emotionless monsters. They didn't get the chance to really show their acting chops.

I really didn't care for I saw the Devil. It was complete nonsense and unbelievably over-the-top. Not even the considerable acting talents of Choi Min-Sik and Lee Byung-Hun could save it.

Sympathy for Mr Vengeance review

 Number 549 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Korean neo-noir crime thriller 'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance.'

Spoilers ahead

The deaf/mute Ryu (Shin Ho-Kyun) is a factory worker with a sister who desperately needs a kidney transplant. After he is fired from his job and is robbed by organ traffickers who run off with his kidney, he concocts a hair-brained scheme to kidnap the daughter of a rich man and hold her to ransom to pay for another kidney. But then things start to go wrong.

Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is Park Chan-Wook's first film in his Vengeance trilogy, later followed by Old Boy and Lady Vengeance. While I would consider Old Boy one of the best films of all time ever made, I cannot speak so highly of Sympathy for Mr Vengeance.

This film was confused and unfocussed. It straddled multiple genres without ever really engaging in one. Although it is labelled as a neo-noir, crime-thriller, it strayed into black/gross-out comedy like when it showed the organ traffickers engaging in casual necrophilia. Yet this humour was so off-beat that it wasn't funny at all.

At other times it tried being a romance with Ryu and his girlfriend Yong-Mi Cha ( Bae Boona) plotting to kidnap the little girl - Yu-Sun, but for reasons I'll explain later, this didn't work either. The film also strayed into horror with its gratuitous use of gore, plus the ghostly apparition of Yu-Sun.

But Sympathy for Mr Vengeance also didn't have a central protagonist. You think it would be Ryu and to a lesser extent Yeong-Mi, but after Ryu's sister and Yu-sun die, Yeong-Mi is promptly forgotten about, as is her relationship with Ryu, and the film shifts focus to Yu-Sun's father Park Dong-Jin (Song Kang-ho.) He swears revenge on those who killed Yu-Sun, which sees the film remembering about Ryu and Yeong-Mi, but this shift in protagonist was confusing and disjointed.

Speaking of disjointed, the film was poorly edited. It had a bad habit of cross-cutting in an incohesive way - we crosscut from Ryu's sister's body being discovered to her having an autopsy. But also in key scenes, the camera cut away to a completely unrelated scene which left certain plot threads dangling. For example, Ryu and Yeong-Mi discuss kidnapping Yu-Sun one minute, the next she's in their flat not worse for wear.

In one scene, Dong is tied up to a lamp post, the next he's walking about without a scratch. Finally, when Ryu goes to take revenge on the three organ traffickers who stole his kidney, he kills tow of them, but then the third one comes at him with a knife. What happens next? I don't know, because the camera cuts away. Later on, we are told that he has killed her too and has eaten her kidney.

I get that the film was going for a whole "if you set off on a quest for vengeance you must first dig two graves," which is true," as mostly everybody ends up dead, but this was lost in disjointed storytelling and confusing editing.

True Grit 1969 Review

 Number 885 on the top 1000 films of all time is Henry Hathaway's 1969 Western 'True Grit.'

Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) is a teenage girl living in Yell County, Arkansas when her father is unjustly killed by outlaw Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey,) she enlists federal marshals Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) and La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) to bring him to justice. Accompanying them on their mission, Mattie soon forms a close relationship with Rooster and La Boeuf.

For a Western film, I quite enjoyed True Grit. This goes for both the original and the 2010 remake. Generally, I find cowboy films tedious and overly-long *cough cough* Sergio Leone, but True Grit was thoroughly watchable.

One reason was because of Mattie Ross. Just like in the remake, she was far from the typical damsel-in-distress cliche that many women of her era were relegated to, so it was very refreshing to have a character with as much agency and pep as Mattie did. She was a feisty female before that was even a thing. I do think it's a shame they gave her a tomboyish appearance though. She's a woman. Let her look like a woman. The Coen Brothers let Hailee Steinfield look feminine. Why not the same for Kim Darby?

True neither John Wayne or Henry Hathaway thought much about Darby's acting abilities, but I think that was more down to her dialogue. Her lines were so verbose and clunky, it was like she was in My Fair lady having elocution lessons with Rex Harrison. Her actions were also rash and impulsive and drove a lot of the film's conflict, but again that's more her writing than Darby's acting.

John Wayne gave a good spin as the irrascible Rooster Cogburn. It was good that he won the Best Actor Oscar. And I did enjoy his performance. He was a very likeable cinnamon swirl. Robert Duvall was also great as minor villain Ned Pepper. If anything he was better than Jeff Corey's rather simplistic performance as Tom Chaney.

Overall, I enjoyed True Grit more than I thought I would. It had John Wayne giving a great lead performance, a fresh spin on the standard female character and had that glorious cinematography that you would expect from a cowboy film.