Interwar Pulp Western Back-of-Beyond Excellence: The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008)

If you like crazy spaghetti Western action. If you like crazy interwar Pulp action. If you like crazy Mad Max action. Then you will love The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008, Rated R) from South Korean filmmaker  Jee-woon Kim. You can watch it streaming on Netflix or pick up the DVD or Blu-Ray on Amazon for about $11. Do not let subtitles put you off from watching this film. I give it 5/5 stars, which is rare for me. The train robbery at the beginning alone is worth the price of admission! The ending has some nice twists. Check the official UK website for more info.

This movie is really hard to describe. According to IMDb, "The story of two outlaws and a bounty hunter in 1930s Manchuria and their rivalry to possess a treasure map while being pursued by the Japanese army and Chinese bandits."  I'm horrible at writing reviews of anything, so just let me say that this move has everything I love, plus the soundtrack is amazing. I kept asking myself, I wonder where I can get figures for these characters! (You can bet that I will be blogging about that soon!)
 
The directing is over the top and often tongue-in-cheek. The R rating is for violence and some language. (Ok, it's not a family film.) I had been fearing a lot of guts and gore, but there really isn't any of that. Kim makes you imagine the gory parts, such as someone's finger getting chopped off, which I find better than seeing it.

One last bit of advice: keep watching into the beginning of the credits. Like most Asian films, the "real ending" is in the credits. After that, they just show stills from the movie while finishing up the screen crawl.