Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a couple more reviews out of Toronto, the first a sci-fi comedy sounding thing involving (possibly) time travel called FETCHING CODY, the second a sword-play flick out of Asia called DUELIST! Enjoy!
Hello Harry (in absentia) and Quint again,
Claudius here with a few more reviews from the TIFF:
Fetching Cody by David Ray
A love story? A time travel story? Both actually and very well executed. With a budget of, and I quote: “less than the price of a house in Toronto” and with a shoot that lasted 15 days, David Ray managed to make a thought provoking and funny movie about the sacrifices people will make for love.
Art and Cody are two young kids in love (Jeez, I seem to be getting a lot of those lately). Art also happens to be Cody’s pimp and sometime source of drugs on the rough streets of Vancouver’s east-side. One of Arts fellow street friends, a collector of sorts named Harvey, shows Art his greatest find, an old recliner festooned with Christmas lights which Harvey believes to be a time machine. Art dismisses this of course until he finds Cody on the floor of her apartment, apparently in a drug induced coma.
The film follows Art’s often comic, and sometimes sad, attempts to save Cody from her fate. David Ray’s story does not fall into any of the stereotypes we see so often of life on the streets. For example, it is quite easy to believe that Art and Cody were always meant for each other and are genuinely in love, although their relationship is also based on Art being Cody’s supplier. The believability of this relationship is crucial to the film, and the actors (Jay Baruchel and Sarah Lind) perform admirably in this role. If ever this gets a wide release, I would definitely recommend this movie.
Duelist by Lee Myung-se
If you want a different kind of movie experience, Duelist certainly offers this. If you wanted to try and explain the style of it, Duelist would be a Manga comic translated to live action with a mixture of a 70’s cop show, American football and a dash of Benny Hill with a plethora of other influences. It’s also set in (I believe) medieval era Korea.
No, I’m not joking.
Detective Namsoon, performed quite brilliantly by Ha Ji-Won, a cop with a talent for disguises is on the trail of a counterfeiter with her partner and mentor Detective Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki). As part of the investigation, she soon encounters a talented and enigmatic swordsman known only as Sad Eyes. Sword(fore)play ensues. A deeper plot soon emerges that could topple the government of the day.
Duelist succeeds in bringing the Manga style to life admirably. The cinematography is highly stylized and is used generally to very good effect. Ha Ji-Won does a very good job on Namsoon, a character more akin to Dirty Harry than to Sherlock Holmes. Her character provides plenty of comic relief and is generally not too jarring to the rest of the story line. Detective Ahn is also a strong character who keeps the hot headed Namsoon in check. The fighting sequences, an all important component of course, are generally very very good.
There are a few issues I have with this movie. Slow-motion effects are abused and overused here. Some of the fighting sequences would have benefited from a less stylized treatment.
In spite of these few failings, Duelist is a very good effort by Lee Myung-se that deserves to be seen at a movie theater, if nothing else to see the stunning visual tableaux being generated.
Hopefully these reviews are of some use. Faithfully yours,
Claudius
