PROJECT 2 : A Human Race
A review of My Way (Mei Wei).
Name of the Movie: My Way (Mei Wei)
Year of Release: 2011 in South Corea, 2012 in France
Film Director: Kang Je-Gyu
Studio: Jang Don-Gun and Joe Odagiri. People from Russia, China and Japan.
Genre: Bipersonal Rivalry-based War movie.
Running Time: 1h19
MPAA Rating: NC-17
Reviewer's Rating: 4,5/5
Synopsis:
Korea, 1938, while Japan occupies Korea.
Jun-Shik Kim (Korea) and Tatsuo Hasegawa (Japan) are two childhood rivals. Since they were young teenagers, they used to mesure themselves in short races, facing each other for years. As great performers, they're now used to compete in professional races, either winning or finishing at second place. One day, a race turns into a riot and the Korean Jun-Shik is sent to to front, not taking much time before getting to deal with Tatsuo's arrogance yet again. They will lead their old rivalry through the bullets and the explosions of the Allies; trying to stay alive in different fronts.
Reviewer's review: Positive points:
There's a lot to say in here, I'll explain: A movie can be rated using a lot of different arguments, such as the actors' performance, the choice of the musics, the plot, the places of reccording, special effects and every single other thing people can either like or dislike. As it would probably be too subjective for it to be interesting, I'll avoid things like "I like I don't like that" and go the explaining route; picking some arguments and dealing with them one by one.
The Plot:
Things keep moving. It's pretty hard to explain this without spoiling the movie, but I'd try to by saying you can never really expect anything to happen in this movie. The plot twists are numerous, but even this way you are never really shocked. Most of the time, you might just not know how Jun-Shik or Tatsuo is going to deal with his situation, but then you come to expect something you feel crazy and unbelievable somehow. This is where the word "epicness" takes all his sense! Your expectation, whatever it is, can be a good one. Kang Je-Gyu worked a lot on making incredible things credible, and on making your watching time amazing.
Music/Location Choices:
Nothing really shocking here, the songs are well incorporated to the occuring action and make us fall deeper into the movie. We can say the same thing about the places, maybe adding that each place the characters go at reflects their state of mind at the very occuring moment. That's all pretty standard though.
Special Effects:
There it is. The movie was billed as a 25 million dollars one, so it makes sense that the special effects are really well done and that we won't be shocked by a 1950s plastic supposedtoshowshaveness thingy like we could be when watching the Seven Samurai while watching this actual masterpiece.
Reviewer's Review: Negative Points:
It's pretty hard to say much in here, especially knowing the only real thing I could criticize would make me spoil the movie to you if I did want to explain it into details. I'll still try. The matter is more of an after-watching reflexion than of a watching time issue. As I told about it a bit earlier in this review, the director of My Way worked a lot and very well on making anything seem coherent, but there's something he seems not to have thought of or been taking care much about. While watching the movie, every single character appreciation swap (the changes that occur in our mind about us loving or hating a character) seems coherent, but there's still something that we feel confused about after the running time is over, or maybe two minutes before hand. This is pretty much it for the explanation, I think the best way for you to understand what I mean now is simply watching the movie if you didn't get it, otherwise you'd be hating me for spoiling you a such one.
Characterisation:
Jun-Shik and Tatsuo are played by respectively a Korean and a Japanese actor, which means both characters can be played at their best by both Jang Dong-gun and Joe Odagiri as they can identify themselves to who they play. Jang Dong-gun (Jun-Shik) does amazingly well in hiding emotions, and can do it even that well that he manages to tell us somehow what he has in mind. For what's about Joe Odagiri (Tatsuo), we can say he also is amazing at conveying emotions. He takes different positions in the movie, each one being really different and whatever his position is, he plays it the right way and nothing seems to be played, faked or something. The rest of the cast is doing well too, there's a real choice the was made on the actors' face that somehow conveys the emotions to feel even easier.
Reviewer's very own Opinion:
As a not-that-much adverted film viewer, I loved watching this movie without really knowing why. I then rewatched it twice and began to know what was actually amazing in it. Everything is working together inside of My Way, and inspires something really intense to anyone who watches it. I don't know much about cinematographic things, but I can say I loved watching this movie without finding anything that I'm used to find in the most of the movies I've seen until then.
Now, just enjoy your time watching.
Aurélien