Guns & Talks

By sizemore Last edited 210 months ago
Guns & Talks
gunsandtalks.jpg

If you can get away early today you should check out the late afternoon Firecracker screening of Guns & Talks. It's a quirky Korean combination of thriller and comedy revolving around a quartet of hitmen.

Professional killers are an old favourite ingredient for Asian cinema, but it’s been a while since the pot was stirred in quite such a fun way. The first thing to notice is Won Bin's narration - he knows you're out there listening and at times apologises for stumbling over things so while he's not quite breaking the fourth wall he's most definitely knocking hard on it.

The film plays with other conventions too - a nice split screen sequence livens up a search while a character in flashback has to adjust reality as the scene is changed around him. The plot too takes some nice little departures from the norm so you're never quite sure what's going to happen next.

The four young men take any job, any time and their track record makes them a favourite for odd jobs (one hit is to be carried out only on the target's left hand). They show little sympathy for those they kill seeing their role in the world as a necessary one and happily enough spend their time mooning over their favourite TV anchor woman. Things get messy when they come to the attention of an unorthodox police officer at the same time as one of the team finds himself unable to carry out what should be a pretty straight forward assignment. And then a schoolgirl turns up asking them to kill her English teacher...

Not really an action movie then, but very rewarding if you want something a little different from the regular crop of action/comedy flicks. Guns and Talks plays today at the Curzon Soho at 4pm and again on the 22nd at the Renoir at 6.45.

Full Firecracker details and the showcase trailer can be found here.

Last Updated 18 September 2006