Seoul Raiders (2005)
Reviewed by: JohnR on 2005-07-03
Summary: Inaction Cinema
I went into this with low expections, but geez, this movie is just bad. I can hear the North Korean communists saying, "You see, this is exactly what we're afraid of."

I liked Tokyo Raiders. I don't mind weak plots in action films, I recognize that this movie was designed to be light-weight, tongue-in-cheek fare, but the only efforts put out in making it were by the casting director and the cinemotographer. In other words, it looks great, but there's nothing there besides looks. It's what you get when you take an action movie and remove the action, the brains., and the life force. It's like a zombie movie where the movie itself is the zombie.

There's even very little relief from the sidekick bunnies. The ones in TR had some personality; these ones are like mannequins (except for the one who wasn't the model or the bar girl). They just take up space.

The fight scenes are a joke. A previous reviewer called them slow motion slap fights; that's a perfect description. It's like watching two people fight, both of whom are too afraid to really hurt the other one because it might get them really mad. Except there's more than two of them; although the others generally stand around and take turns attacking. The scene where Tony and the Korean thug square off in a prolonged stare-down contest is a perfect metaphor for all the fight scenes in this movie.

Hsu Chi's scene where she is disguised as a guy is performed flawlessly; three cheers to her for it. The rest of the time she plays her ditzy character that just annoys; you want to slap her and say, "Do you know how old you are?"

This movie was apparently aimed at 12 year old Korean girls. If you don't fit this description, stay away. Far away.