The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008)

Directed by: Jee-Woon Kim

Frenetic comic-book violence far-east style, with a plot based on The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, but borrowing from Once Upon A Time In The West, Mad Max 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It’s a western set in Manchuria in the thirties, but with odd departures: a train robbery features a glimpses of a guy with a punk-style yellow mohican, and the bad guy (Byung-hun Lee) is dressed à la seventies (looking to me a little like Pacino’s Scarface).

The good guy (Woo-sung Jung) has an inexplicable ability to be in the right place at the right time, which detracts from tension – so does the infallibility of the main characters’ aim except when it comes to shooting at each other.

The film looks gorgeous in high-definition in a comic-book sort of way, but overall this is a prawn-cracker: superficially tasty, but insubstantial.