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The City of Violence


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🎙️ EPISODE 457: 05.02.22

Once upon a time, before the reign of TRUE RANDOM, I developed a concept which I referred to as "The Lucy Line." This was a play on the baseball concept of "The Mendoza Line" which is, OF COURSE, a reference to Mexican former professional baseball infielder, Mario Mendoza:
the term was invented in 1979 by his Mariner teammates Bruce Bochte and Tom Paciorek. Bochte and Paciorek would tease Mendoza about his low batting average, as he struggled to hit .200 for the season - and throughout his career, finishing below .200 five times in his nine seasons in the big leagues.
The idea being that hitting .200 is the absolute bare minimum average one could/should expect to hit at and still have a job playing baseball. Well, "The Lucy Line" is a reference to the Scarlett Johansson/Morgan freeman sci-fi vehicle, Lucy (2014, directed by Luc Besson). Now, it's been a minute since I watched that one, but I came away feeling like it also met the absolute bare minimum for "yeah, that was fine, but I will never willfully watch it again." Just a perfectly average 5 out of 10. And so I'm pleased to announce that this 2006 action-packed South Korean crime flick is the latest entry to the "The Lucy Line" series, and that said "series" has its own blog tag. Hooray.

I watched this a couple days ago and I've mostly forgotten all of it. (A classic "Lucy Line" hallmark of !) But nonetheless, I'll do my best here to pick out some highlights for you, my dear readers. Enjoy! ...

I think I first realized I was watching THAT TYPE of movie during this funky music fight sequence, which is actually a flashback to our five prominent characters in high school that ends in a classic 80s-style freeze-frame...


This fight ends with the five of them being buried up to their necks in dirt and spontaneously breaking out into song (!) lol...


a Among the many (too many!) editing and filmmaking tricks here are several examples of deep focus, which was either achieved via split-focus diopter or in post-production (this technique is used several times)...



There are really too many of these WEIRD CHOICES IN EDITING to keep track at, so I made a lil supercut of a few of them to show you just how all over the place visually this thing is...


Next up, the main guy gets into a breakdancing/karate fight which escalates into a massive fight involving 4-7 roving gangs sprawled out over an entire city block. It lasts almost five minutes (here it is in double-time)...


That goth baseball gang shows up again right after for a very confusing, all over the place fight scene montage...


LOOK AT THESE GOTH BASEBALL GANG MEMBERS !!! What is even happening here...???


Why are their faces painted like that? Why are they all lined up like that on the ground? (Don't ask me!)

The reason I'm not getting into the plot is because it is far too stupid to explain. It isn't hard to follow necessarily, just incredibly dumb. Definitely shaved off a few IQ points during this viewing.

One aspect of the dumb plot is that there is bottle of "snake booze" in a classic Coke container which is point of emphasis. (Don't worry about it.) The main guy breaks it open and eats the head of the snake which is pretty cool...


The last third of this is basically just one big fight set-piece after another and — I have to admit — some of them are fairly badass...


This scene where a bunch of WIVES get up, bow (ha) and leave their husbands so that they can do an intense knife fight pretty much sums up what this picture thinks about women lol (it thinks poorly of them insomuch as there are basically NO female characters of note)...


LOOK: Boys are gonna be boys and get into insane knife-wielding clashes where all of them die sometimes duh.

The movie ends with a final showdown set to some pretty comical western sounding music, before one of the good guys ties a samurai sword to his chopped-off hand and plunges it into the back of the main bad guy...


And this final word sums it up better than I ever could...




CHRONOLOGICALLY
EPISODE 456 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 458⫸

The City of Violence (Korean: 짝패; RR: Jjakpae; lit. "Partner" or "Pal") is a 2006 South Korean action crime film co-written and directed by Ryoo Seung-wan, who stars in the film opposite action director and longtime collaborator Jung Doo-hong. The story re-unites three former childhood friends for their friend's funeral, which prompts two vowing to find his murderer. It was released on May 25, 2006.

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