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★★½☆☆
1 September 2016
A movie review of TRAIN TO BUSAN. |
“Whatever you do, you must finish what you started,” Seok-woo (Gong Yoo)
One was expecting more from writer-director Yeon Sang-ho, whose brand of scathing misanthropy has carved a distinctive vein in the world of animation (KING OF PIGS, THE FAKE). Applying his previous sensibility to a zombie action movie had me salivating at the prospects. Instead we have a conventional disaster movie (think THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE), which seems to embrace ticking off genre clichés without irony. That’s not to say TRAIN TO BUSAN is not fun, there are at times exciting combat sequences, showcasing director Yeon’s seamless transition to live action filmmaking. It is doubly a shame then he did not bring his more cynical eye.
One was expecting more from writer-director Yeon Sang-ho, whose brand of scathing misanthropy has carved a distinctive vein in the world of animation (KING OF PIGS, THE FAKE). Applying his previous sensibility to a zombie action movie had me salivating at the prospects. Instead we have a conventional disaster movie (think THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE), which seems to embrace ticking off genre clichés without irony. That’s not to say TRAIN TO BUSAN is not fun, there are at times exciting combat sequences, showcasing director Yeon’s seamless transition to live action filmmaking. It is doubly a shame then he did not bring his more cynical eye.
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The focus of the film is a groansome father-young daughter relationship. He works too hard, and has been absent to such an extent divorce is on the cards. Will he learn a valuable lesson by the end? One kept hoping the story would subvert predictability. It didn’t. Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) is a fund manager, an unsubtle commentary on merciless capitalism and comes to the fore in the human villain of the piece. THE HOST (2006) this isn’t.
The problem the zombie horror subgenre has right now is competing with television show THE WALKING DEAD – when the series is on fire cinema is left in its dust. Humanity as the real threat, rather than the cataclysm, has been demonstrated superlatively in novels ‘Blindness’ and ‘The Road’. THE WALKING DEAD’s modus operandi is just that idea. Of course the advantages the silver screen has are budget and scale, but we have already seen WORLD WAR Z founder.
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TRAIN TO BUSAN has the prosaic character mix of heroes, villains, cowards, victims and the vulnerable (there’s even a heavily pregnant woman (Jeong Yu-mi)!). The women tend to be the ones who need to be rescued here, which annoyed. Mischonne (Danai Gurira) in THE WALKING DEAD is iconic; couldn’t cinema replicate? The pacing is also the commonplace mix of tension and excitement and then sentimental respite before ramping up again. The zombies are ferocious, more like the rage sufferers from 28 DAYS LATER – they kill not for food but out of pure compulsion. They are athletic and pelt along at an alarming rate. Being set on a train, is that a cheeky observation of city dwellers’ zombie-like commute? Only once free from the shackles of the daily grind do we enliven?
The bitten turn quickly, in bone crunching realignment – a fresh transformation portrayal. The opening has a dead deer do the same to impressive effect. Also, the undead falling from a helicopter into the middle of some car park skateboarders is both funny and nutty – more of such would have been welcome. The ending is cheese. For those expecting the equivalent of THE MIST, you will come away slightly dejected.
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