《分手的决心》director Park Chan-wook (朴赞郁) ***half
The movie overall is very slick and quick paced and very delicate in the facial expressions of the male lead;
You know right at the beginning, when the camera focused on the male leads face without any dialogue.
Its the moment of "love at first sight" - similar to Jackie Brown walking in the dark towards this man who is supposed to be bounty hunter.
However the male lead plays an experienced police who has a very pretty wife.
The wife is v kind to him, just the right age, look, not that much more "worn" in physical aspects
as compared to the stories new love interest, played by Tang Wei.
Tang Wei looks very tall in the movie, she doesnt give us any clue on the characters complexity.
Sweet face, and not quirky. If her character was as smart as the story wants us to believe, then the suicide, the murder, mafia connections
somehow did not take expression in a convincing way. It is kind of bland.
Very sleek colors compositions, and very good dialogues because the side kick, a young police man
notices details that the male lead, would rather he not ask these questions. Very humorous and smart at the same time.
But, the story is fatally flawed, we just cannot believe the Tang Wei character as a victim
nor as a calculating murderer. We have to take what the story tells us through very sketchy reasonings -
and the whole film is sprinkled with sweet nostalgic music, nice kindly grandma,
mafia man who kicks and kills and pushes women so they kind of bleed in the corner of the mouth etc.
The whole movie is in a type of comic book style, quick, bold colors, romance.
Love, ultimate love where this woman who could scheme so well, plans a very lame way to kill herself.
This is an entertainment quick paced movie, glossy, pretty, and some pretense in romantic love.
Maybe with todays experiences of romantic love, this story line is not moving, it is not believable.
I could find any youtube crime documentaries, reports on real life crimes more interesting to watch.
Eye candies are just that. Its very hard to make an eye candy movie in crime nowadays.
I think its not easy at all.
Excellent actors and actrices and of course very smooth and good directing, skillful, flowing with ease.
But the story line is too sketchy thus fatal to the nice finishing of the movie making itself.
because every moment, I am not surprised, with recurring "we have seen this before".
