Guns & Talk

Guns and Talk


Cast:

Shin Hyun Joon
Jung Jae Young
Shin ha Gyoun
Won Bin

I presumed that this was just another Korean action movie, or worse, a typical action movie about guns, hideouts and all that tough-look, act-brave, ruthless, gruelling, police-chasing, car racing, gruesome, bullet and blood-filled scenes.

But after seeing the opening scene in the movie wherein a man waits for a car to stop in the middle of the road, enters in and hears out a woman saying that she wanted to kill a person, I knew that this was something else.

My rope of interest was tightened when I heard Won Bin's voice as he started narrating or rather introducing the main characters in the story. He readily admits and announces that they are assassins. A quartet of male assassins. San Yun (Shin Hyun Joon) is the leader of the group and Won Bin's brother. His idiosyncrasies include taking pictures of his clients and being proud of them as if they were medals and trophies. The keen and swift one is Jae Young (Jung Jae Young). A sharp-shooter who also never misses out to go to the cathedral and talk to a priest after accomplishing his work. The careless and curious and impatient piece is Jung Woo (Shin Ha Gyoun).

Jung Woo. One-fourth assassin

He has the worst temper but a great marathoner. Last but not the least, we have Ha Yun (Won Bin) who always takes the backseat when his brother is around. He is the ignorant but emotional one who is terrible at cooking. Most of the time he is the mediator of the group.

They're ruthless people who get paid to kill. I thought that this movie will make me pity all those people on their list. I didn't. I was actually laughing all the time. This is not a purely action movie. This is a 3-fold genre film: an action dramedy.

Let's talk about the action part. Of course, guns, shoot-outs, disguises, police chases, detectives, inventive gadgets are all present. But if this was a dance number, I say the choreography was great. I have 2 favorite scenes. The first is when the police officer and San Yun were in the department store. They faced each other and pretended to have a gun in their pockets aimed at one another. They slowly moved out of the department store with an excellent "cha-cha-like" footwork. The second is when Tak Mun Bae (a freed gang leader) inside his Mercedes Benz ordered his driver to call the quartet to kill the police officer. The triplet (because San Yun was injured) quickly responded with a sequence of gunshots. The driver and Mun Bae, delighted to see the trio approaching their car, smiled even after being fired at.

Comedy? There were truckloads. Even the supposed most dramatic or action-filled scene reverberated into a comic one. Just some of the best ones:

- In the tollgate where San Yun was supposed to hand to the target's left hand the change together with a coin-sized bomb that will explode in 3 seconds. Since they are all very keen and precise when it comes to the order or request of the client, San Yun can't hand to the man inside the car the change because the man stretched his right instead of his left arm. San Yun kept shortening his arm but the man still reached out with his right.

- Won Bin deliberately admits his mistakes as a narrator of the movie. He funnily said, "When doing a narrative, you can't help but to trip on your own words."

- When San Yun got shot and was in dire need of blood transfusion, Uncle Joo (their weapon master and provider), asks the three what San Yun's blood type is. The three were all panicky and couldn't think of the right answer. Seconds later, they all chorused to answer "B! Blood type B!" The next scene was Uncle Joo saying that he never knew all of them would be type B while the three had respective syringes injected into their arms.

- The supposed dramatic story of Oh Young Ian (a newsanchor who is the reason why the quartet woild have a care to watch the morning news) ended up into an icebreaker when she decided to hire the 4 to kill someone she hates.

Oh Young Ian

Since the boys were big fans, they couldn't turn down the order despite the location being risky and commotion-prone.

Watching the morning news

- Who can ever forget about Gong Hyo Jin? She was the girl stalker of the group who rightly guessed that the 4 are assassins. She requests that her English teacher be killed. After hearing her tragic story and seeing her in deep desperation, the boys were adamant to deny about their job.

On the other, there is serious drama, too. The scene where San Yun was running away from the police officer chasing him. He suddenly remembered his father's last words about keep running fast. I guess at the moment, that's the only way to face his problem. Then, pictures of all of his clients flashed into his mind and made him cry. He cried because he suddenly felt he lost the reason to live. Another dramatic scene was when Won Bin lectured on love

Love is bright and innocent
With that innocence any envy, jealousy, spite or anger can be overcome
To someone in love, you can't blame them for it

Everything was heartfelt except for the dramatic exaggeration that happened next. And last was during the assassination of the lead actor in the play Hamlet (as ordered by Oh Young Ian). He died in the play. And he died, too because of Jae Young's shot. Lying on stage, motionless, blood slowly flows out of his body, forming a butterfly-like outline. Everyone stoo up clapping as confetti showered down on them. That was really morose. You can then and there see how nonchalant if not indifferent most people are.

Overall, the movie presents to us a dimensional world we live in and a dimensional character of human beings. Like when people were clapping at the death of Hamlet, the assassins were silently clapping at their masterpiece, too. Moreover, the most important scene was when the police officer refused to arrest San Yun albeit the latter giving himself in the police station. The police officer's reason was San Yun will not kill or cannot kill unless paid to. He won't arrest him. He'll catch criminals so he can starve San Yun to death.

Won Bin (the narrator) in the beginning until the end still posed the same question "Why do people want to kill?" He failed to answer it. But now at least he knows and we know one reason why. For some people to live.

The Quartet

This movie is really good when you want to do an analysis on morality and media.