Recently, Kozo weighed in on his thoughts on Lee Byung-Hun’s (LBH!) appearance in the new GI:JOE movie, as well as other Asian actors like Rain playing ninjas in Hollywood productions. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my two cents about the movie and LBH’s performance, among other things.

 At least I get to show my face, take that Ray Park!

First of all, I cannot emphasize enough that GI:JOE is a ridiculous, cheesy, and over-the-top movie. I thought it was okay, and for the most part, I could suppress my skepticism and “just go with it,” that is until the Joes decided to storm Destro’s unbelievably intricate and impossible-to-exist underwater base. At that moment, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Even if I were ten, I’m pretty sure I would think it looked lame (BTW: District 9 was made with probably a quarter of the money this movie was made, and it’s effects look photo-real. Go see it. It’s great).

Much better than the Speed Racer Rain figure.

 What really captured my attention was the Snake-Eyes/Storm Shadow subplot (complete with pint-sized versions of the characters beating the snot out of each other in a flashback) and LBH’s performance, in particular. I mean, Ray Park, was fine — but it’s hard to screw up a mute dressed in black with badass martial arts ability. No, it was LBH who stole the show — he’s actually the only actor who had one interesting acting moment — a misty-eyed meditation that segued into his flashback. Anyway, the guy is cool as a cucumber and looks snazzy in his perpetually white duds (I’m not sure how this guy eats spaghetti without ruining his clothes, but I digress). I liked his performance so much, I would be tempted to call this a “star-making role,” if not for the fact that a) he’s already a star in Asia and b) he didn’t appear in the other Hasbro toy commercial, Transformers 2, which played to an exponentially larger audience globally despite it’s inability to contain a credible storyline or believable performances (save Optimus Prime, he was the only good actor in that one!).

 Even my beautiful, but ever-skeptical girlfriend was impressed with LBH, despite thinking he was a total goober back in his cheesy K-Drama days. But in all honesty, it was Cobra Commander that she really liked, albeit only when he a) wasn’t wearing his stupid mask, b) not chewing up the scenery with bad overacting, and c) wooing Zooey Deschanel in a totally different movie.

 After Summer dumps him, Cobra Commander institutes 500 DAYS OF COBRA.

Setting aside my seemingly burgeoning man crush on LBH aside, I have to admit I’ve been watching a lot of Korean stuff lately — in particular, The Good, The Bad, The Weird,  and the Daniel Henney flick My Father (it’s just okay, I guess. Really, the brief footage of the actual people that this film’s story is based on that runs over the end credits is infinitely more moving than the entire film).

I should also mention that I spent the last few days watching a Korean drama entitled Someday. A massive review is forthcoming, but take this moment to announce that I may never watch a Korean drama again. And not because I hated the show. Sure, I have Coffee Prince on my DVD shelf in California, and my mom has Something Happened in Bali, Women of the Sun, Damo, and Ilchimae, but I don’t think I’ll be watching any of them. I use to harbor the idea that if I owned a DVD produced in Asia that I was obligated to write a review for the site. I no longer work under this self-imposed delusion.

In any event, the last time I reviewed a K-drama, I’m pretty sure I swore I would’t do it again and I liked My Lovely Sam Soon. To tell the truth, K-Dramas are too much of a time commitment, they usually don’t payoff in the way you’d hope, they’re littered with annoying cliches, and they’re harder than hell to write reviews for. So no more K-Dramas! But then again, I heard that Storm Shadow himself is starring in a K-Drama called IRIS. Oh crap.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under GI:JOE, Lee Byung-Hun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.