After 5 minutes into the film, you'll have a good idea of what sort of film to expect. The protaganists in the initial gun battle seem impervious to a whole army of police with machine guns. Top it off with a couple of gratuitous exploding car stunts and you'll understand that the accent is on action, and light on logic. The ensuing subway train action relies more on blue-screen fakery and CGI rather than actual stunts, so please don't expect expensive Die Hard 2 set pieces.
Having said that, the film's strength is its cast - the characters are likeable and well-acted. This being a mainstream action film, there is comedy relief on hand from Seok-hun Kim's overly angry boss. Du-na Bae, as Kim's fiesty love interest, is particularly memorable - she previously starred in the awesome Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. Though I'm not sure why she carries a guitar around for the entire film!
This isn't a bloody police vs gangster shoot-em-up - there's no gore - it's more the sort of violence you expect from a disaster movie rather than a martial arts film. That said, it still doesn't pull it's punches with the fight scenes, the impact being more dramatic than visceral.
Basically I'm trying to warn off viewers who watch Asian action films for high-class stunts and blood action, and recommend this to those interested in Korean mainstream cinema - this one not to be taken too seriously. The characters are very real, the acting excellent and the plot keeps moving briskly along with twists around every corner.
The Scandinavian Asian Vision region 2 DVD (pictured) has an excellent DTS soundtrack, clear picture and excellent english subtitles. No extras except trailers.
THE UNINVITED (2003, South Korea)
INTO THE MIRROR
Ji-tae Yu stars as the store's security chief, who's resigned from the police after a hostage situation went horribly wrong (that may sound corny, but they've added plenty of twists). This young and attractive actor is one of Korea's biggest stars, judging by some of his recent credits - he was suitably sinister in the superb Oldboy, he starred in the futuristic police actioner Natural City, voiced a character in the sci-fi animation Wonderful Days (aka Sky Blue), and had major parts in Siren (aka Libera Me) and the enjoyable teen slasher Nightmare (aka The Horror Movie Game). No wonder he looks familiar.
UPDATE, January 2008: Alexandre Aja set to release a remake of this as Mirrors, starring Kiefer Sutherland!
The soldiers who here specialise in 'killing gods' are way too confident, and are portrayed as being ultra-cool, smoking like chimneys and wasting bullets like there's no tomorrow. One fancy fight routine is enhanced with some belated Matrix-style effects.
The CGI monster is well-designed and looks good in close-up (which is just as well, because whenever there's a dull moment we get a shot of the monster's face in close up). It's movements are a little lightweight but looks excellent when flying. The film-makers bravely place it in white corridors in some scenes and, while we know it's CG, the compositing into the action is flawless. But the action scenes rarely pick up momentum and the narrative is constantly hard to follow - there's one moment in the subway when I thought there were two monsters, the editing was so misleading. A simple story, badly told.
One last tip, if you're going to set a monster movie in a big city, at least show off some of the sites. We only ever see Bangkok at night and the skyscrapers could be from anywhere. A few establishing shots and the trashing of some local landmarks could have given GARUDA more of a sense of location.
This Thai DVD (sleeve pictured above) is all-region PAL, with 5.1 and DTS audio. The picture aspect is 16:9 anamorphic, but the sides seem to be cropped from a wider 2.35 aspect. Much of the detail in the shadows seems to be crushed to black, but this could just be the result of the stylised graded look of the film. In addition, there's a poor trailer but also a good look behind the scenes. The movie has well-translated, easy-to-read english subtitles, but not on the extras.
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This 2 DVD set includes episodes 1 to 13 of the newly re-imagined Japanese anime, remade for the fortieth anniversary of this classic story.
Also known in America as GIGANTOR, this is the story of a leftover giant robot, a weapon from WWII, now in the hands of Shotaro, the young son of its original inventor. The series is set in 1950's post-war Japan. Shotaro is something of a boy detective, who uses the Iron Giant to fight crime, and these adventures often lead to him fighting other giant robots.
Like the new ASTRO BOY series, TETSUJIN 28 appears childish at face value, but the stories are so serious, its themes so anguished, that I'd certainly hesitate in recommending it for pre-teens. The series constantly examines the physical and psychological problems faced by the Japanese people after the war, often through imaginary situations. There were no giant robots built during the war, but these plot devices mean that the moral implications for the inventors are examined. Other stories look at human medical experiments, American mobsters, and space exploration technology derived from rocket weaponry. Each story often involving a large amount of tragedy and suffering, in keeping with the subject matter. The stories are well told, dramatic and pacey. The animation veers between simple and spectacular - the rainy tableau for instance are quite beautiful - the action scenes are imaginative and suitably gigantic. I'm enjoying the series, but have got to be braced for the utterly downbeat aura of most episodes.
This DVD set from Hong Kong has split the 26 episode series into two volumes (the first is pictured here). It's reasonably priced, but has several drawbacks - as usual the quality of the english subtitles range from good to poor, in terms of translations. I often felt I was missing plot points, and there was no distinction made between lines spoken by different characters - it's just presented as a block of text - you have to work out which line is spoken by whom.
The other shortcoming of the set is that it has been cropped from the original 16:9 widescreen down to 4:3 fullscreen, severely chopping the compositions, and often cutting characters in half down the edge of the frame.
For these reasons, I'll be waiting for other future releases - the USA is gradually releasing the series at the moment - with Japanese or English audio tracks, and in widescreen. Also, hopefully the 2006 UK release will use the same specifications.
The story's popularity meant that Japan recently also made a live action movie of TETSUJIN 28 - it's currently available on DVD in Japan, but without english subtitles. So again I'm hoping for a promised UK release of the movie on DVD sometime in 2006.
Max
ASTRO BOY- REBIRTH (JAPAN, 2003) 
Finally, don't forget that original ASTRO BOY manga are currently on release in natty little paperback collections, translated into english. Volume 1 of which is pictured here.
ARAHAN (Urban Martian Arts Action) - Korea 2004
ANTARCTICA (Japan, 1983)
The ULTRAMAN NEXT suit looks more organic than usual, more 'Guyver'. I think this biological look works better for the various stages of monster rather than Ultraman himself (he looks his usual fantastic, shiny metallic self in the series though). In the early, moody low-light scenes, you can't tell when the lizardy monster is CGI or 'suitmation', it's very well done. The monster also has human eyes, another touch that really works. Towards the climax, the CGI stuff gets annoying, painstaking though it is - it just seems to me that once they use high-speed CGI representations, they throw out the idea of slow-motion to represent giant size creatures.
Thankfully, the Japanese DVD release has English subtitles, well-translated, for the feature only. Extras include a 20 minute featurette (with enough behind-the-scenes footage to explain the FX involved), trailers and TV spots. The film is presented 16:9 anamorphic, the audio is 5.1 dolby digital.
THE MANITOU (1978)
This was the last movie from director William Girdler. His name on a film meant you were going to be entertained, albeit on a budget. If you like THE MANITOU, then please seek out his DAY OF THE ANIMALS (hikers discover that the thinning ozone layer has turned every animal against mankind) and GRIZZLY (a JAWS rip-off with a bear instead of a shark). Both films are on DVD, but only in fullscreen versions. DAY OF THE ANIMALS should really be seen 1.85 and GRIZZLY should definitely be seen 2.35. In fact GRIZZLY should just be seen - it's a bad taste classic.
