campy and wonderful up until the very end

This movie treats you to a cliche but very enjoyable time with lovable characters and mostly very good acting---up until the last 8 minutes, when with no warning at all the movie punches you in the face and breaks your nose, and then steals your wallet. It wouldn't be so brutal or shocking if the movie hadn't done such a great job of making you care, so that's one point in its favor... but personally, being punched in the face makes it hard for me to appreciate the good stuff that happened earlier.

Watch #2 made it clearer to me that:
1. this is kind of a Bad Movie. Pick at most 3 genres, or at least do a better job of cycling between them instead of doing a linear speedrun? The confusing political side of the plot is revealed by rewatching as just very thin and absurd. I don't mind dumb action movies as long as they've got heart, characters, and good acting, and this one does, so we'll call it a draw.
2. this delivers very concentrated gay vibes and [what reads to westerners as] innuendo --- even for a Korean drama
3. ....I just really liked it, ok!!!!!!
4. I still don't rec watching the last 8 minutes (even the last 30, once they get up on the roof, is all pretty samey), but do listen to the voiceover at the very end (see #2).

Can't comment on the music because I didn't notice it. Can comment on the fact that they love breaking car windshields, but then (every single time!) there's a continuity error where the window is immediately whole again. This happened at least 3-4 separate times and made me feel a bit crazy. Also, the point of pointing a gun at someone is to shoot them if they attempt to do something you don't want them to do, but in the back half of this movie it's used more like punctuation marks on what the characters are saying and is never prevents any character from doing exactly what they want regardless. Why bother!!

In short: if they wanted this to be a serious movie, they had to try harder at being serious. I don't feel bad about mentally cutting it up for parts!

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