All the King's Men

This movie, based on a famous and Pulitzer prizewinning novel, was already made as a film in 1946. Again, they cast the actors of times like Sean Justin Penn, Jude Law, Kate Elizabeth Winslet and so forth. We can see the politician’s life that one joins the dirty political world and is drowned to the politics. He just becomes the political animal which can’t escape from the power and desire.

The story about the success and the ruin of one politician







When it comes to election, politicians make people be deluded by acting as if they can give anything or realize everything that people want. They persuade that they can do everything only if they were elected, particularly for people and the week. If all those politicians’ commitments were realized, every person can be rich, have happy family and there will be no unemployed people and so forth. Long story to make short, they are telling that they are going to make real happy world everything allocates the same to every people. However, we all know that it’s not going to happen and the commitments change to lie eventually.







Willie Stock, who is the official in rural town in Louisiana, accuses the bidding corruption of school construction but only ridicule returns to him. One day, he becomes famous through the accident that kids were killed in that construction site. Thus, a lot of politicos approach to him to use his fame and finally he is recommended to register the candidate of governor and he is in saying that it’s the opportunity to throw away corruption.

He wins the election.

He has the faith and confidence to change the world as an innovator. However, his actions are blocked at the first place because the rich resist his policy. At last, our brave man, Willie, who can’t get away from the power and desire, ends his life with tragedy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Where is the limit of Marvell’s imagination!!

I have been looking forward to this movie, ‘Wolverine’ since a long time ago. It is the greatest hit work of Marvell co., which is very famous as a comic book publisher. This episode is about the secret of how Wolverine was born or made.
Let me introduce the characters first.

Basically, there are shown a lot of characters that have mysterious powers. I’ll introduce just a few main characters here.

1. Wolverine: As you see the title, the most important character is Wolverine who is played by Hugh Jackman. This mutation has the weapon which is coming-out bones from when he needs it for fight and has the animal instinct as well as born natured healing organization. Furthermore, he can live much longer than normal people because his cells age very slowly.



2. Sabretooth: He is a brother and best friend of Wolverine at the first, but becomes so called a natural enemy later. He has the same power as Wolverine. However, one different part with Wolverine is that his all nails can be a weapon. Live Schreiber is casted for this character.



3. Deadpool: This character, is based on Ninza, as far as I know, is most welcomed by fans of the comic book. He is skillful of assassin and fencing, and is played by Ryan Reynolds.



4. Silver Fox: Lynn Collins is casted for this character as Wolverine’s girl friend. According to the original, she takes planting the self curing ability from Wolverine.



5. Agent Zero: I can’t miss this character because the actor, Daniel Henny playing this is a half Korean actor, and has worked in Korea for a few years. He belongs to the government agency and also is very good at gun shot. Furthermore, he is one of kind mutation who has no scent at all on his body.



This movie starts from a small town in north Canada in 1845 as depicted two boys who are Rogan (later Wolverine) and Victor (later Sabretooth). Later, they become involved in the secret team, which is composed of various mutations in order to search ore named as Adamensia. However, Rogan leaves the team because he feels the sickness about the operation. After that, he lives with his girl friend hiding himself. One day, he faces his girl friend killed by Victor and then he decides to join with a man who could help him to revenge with anger. Thus, he becomes reborn as a human weapon and he departs to find Victor...















Actually the story is such a cliché like other story about the person with supernatural. However, there are a lot of political codes or meanings, which I can’t express here, in this movie. If you come to watch this movie, please try to read between lines.

I heard the sequel of Wolverine would be released in 2011. Let’s wait for that with pleasure!

G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra

Duke, who has a natural born talent and is strongly decisive, is a lieutenant of a special force. He lost all of his men by attack from unknown force while he did the mission to carry a high tech weapon, which had an ability to destroy everything. This unknown force, named Cobra is threatening the peace of the world. For breaking this unknown force, G.I. Joe, which is composed of the world’s best elite members, is activated and Duke comes to in this force as well.







Frankly speaking, this is a very simple story showing that good always wins, though its attractions are diverse and exotic. However, as far as I know, this movie that was directed by Stephen Sommers, is based on the kids’ toy like Transformer. G.I. Joe is a toy series that was released by Hasbro in 1964. Then Marble Comics published it as a comic book and again produced as TV series in 1985. Likewise, G.I. Joe is one of the most popular stories in the U.S. that I’ve come to know recently. At one other point, this movie became the talk of the whole country in Korea because the character ‘Storm Shadow’ was played by a Korean actor, ByungHeon Lee. One day, I’ve heard through a TV program that the producer team called him ‘Byung’ in shooting because they thought it was his name. However, they seemed not to know that ‘Byung’ means ‘disease’ in Korea. Anyway, ByungHeon Lee is very popular in Asia as much as Elvis in the U.S. In this work, it’s not sure if Storm Shadow, played by ByungHeon, was dead or not because he just fell down to the water and disappeared. Through this, I expect he’s going to appear again in the next episode.



From the official web site of this movie, I found a few interesting things about this movie. Firstly, this work was shot in many places like America, Norway, and Prague, where the intro was shot. The director, Stephen Sommers, shows pyramids in his movies all the time since he believes that Egypt is a place of luck. Secondly, the stunt man, who plays in the car chasing scene and shows fantastic driving in Paris, has very odd experience. He was a notorious bank burglar in 1960 and became a stunt man after coming out from prison. Most of the scenes were depicted in front of a blue screen and then special effects with computer graphics were added. Therefore, the fighting scenes are very splendid, like acrobatics.













From the subtitle, I could guess a sequel to this work might happen. I believe the producer calculated a sequel in the first place and I’m waiting for it!

Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood is the only actor that I could tell from this movie, not the other actors and actresses. He played the main character who is a lonely old man, Walt Kowalski, and also he produced this movie as a director. He resolved the story very movingly like his other movies, so I dare to say he can be listed as a master director.

This movie is about disappearing things in the United States. The Road is dominated by cars from other countries like Japan and Germany instead of Ford....



Every day Walt mows the grass in front of his house… With these things, old Walt is just waiting for the day he will die. After he lost his wife, he disconnects from his son and grandsons, so he lives alone. For me, the only thing that seemed left was the moment that something would make him end this life. However, there’s a change to his life through the relation with a Hmong boy who tries to steal his 1972 Gran Torino which is Walt's most cherished possession.









At first, Walt Kowalski isn’t happy about Hmong immigrants because he thinks they ruin American tradition and value without reason. For him, America is not only a nation, but a faith. That is to say, if someone is an American according to his thought, he or she should drive a car made by Ford not by Toyota, and mow the grass every morning. This is the reason that he is unhappy about Hmong immigrants since they are not living like Americans, even though they are living in America. In fact, Walt refuses not only neighbors but also the 27-year-old young priest who tries to open Walt's mind.







Walt, who was stubborn, changes little by little through Hmong neighbors. He begins to understand their cultures, and respect their way to live. Though he looked unhappy living alone, I could see his smile the more he hung around the Hmong family. I could guess that something bad would happen or that a tragic ending was waiting for me by his happy face. (It's not easy to write the review not being a spoiler. I don’t want to ruin others' expectations about this movie!) The happiest face of Walt Kowalski was in the moment he taught many things to Tao, like the way to say hello as a true man, or the way to use equipment and so forth.













To be frank with you, there’s no way to express how much I appreciated this movie. If you want to be touched, just go and watch it!

However, if I say a little funny thing in this movie, it would be a Hmong boy’s name called Tao. Kowalski usually called him ‘Todd’ because he might want to call him like that or he might be puzzled at an Asian name. By the way, it could be a hint that Tao would be the owner of the Gran Torino in the end, since the best selling color of Gran Torino at that time was toad green.