This 2002 movie is known as the first part of an incredibly popular cross-over trilogy, the next part being 'Oldboy'. It's a good film, good looking, but too difficult to get too excited by.
We couldn't help but being constantly reminded of 'Mother', which is a better film, with more psychoanalytic depth, and more of a slant on things. The visuals are similar, with the vibrant, clear colours, especially light greens and a very bright white sunshine. The use of the city, the cross of the still quite brazen shanty-towns, also takes us back to 'Mother'. As do the kinds of characters that are portrayed. The very clear off beatness, here occassionally falling into 'quirky'.
The basic tenet of this film is, outside of the all the trappings, actually quite simple. It is all about the extents to which people fit in to society, with those who rebel against the symbolic order moving against it, and those who thought they were safe, ideology-less, finding their worlds falling apart. Everyone though is trapped in a kind of self-centredness, that makes the violence completely inevitable.
There are some interesting images here which adds to this. The reverse 'Antigone' of the burial outside the order, and the general fall of the unthinking capitalist, are well done. The political allusions are underdeveloped, but there's something there.
This film though doesn't really offer solutions, and does find itself going around in circles, running out of themes a bit. It turns into a bloodbath which can, frankly, become a little dull.
This film has interesting themes and a decent enough visual style, but as art and politically (the same) it is a bit of closed circle. It would be silly to say this film isn't quite good, but a stretch to say a lot more.
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