Three Extremes 2: A Short Film Takes Forever Times Three

The film shorts trilogy Three Extremes had work from China's Fruit Chan ("Dumplings"), Japan's Takashi Miike ("Box"), and most memorably Korea's Park Chan-wook ("Cut"). Three Extremes II has three mini-movies from Thailand's Nonzee Nimibutr ("The Wheel"), Hong Kong's Peter Ho-Sun Chan ("Going Home"), and Korea's Kim Ji-woon ("Memories"). Sadly, each of the new featurettes tries way too hard—albeit in a different way. Nimibutr's contribution has a gnarly narrative as if six different screenwriters had pitched an idea about a demonic puppet and the director had opted to do all of them instead of picking the best one. Chan's "Going Home" strains credulity as it constantly out-weirds itself with an out-there account of a naturopathic doctor who puts his wife in a coma to cure her cancer and administers acupuncture to a kidnapped cop while his aborted daughter's ghost roams the halls with the cop's missing son. Kim's featurette is the most disappointing—a pretentious, shapeless dreamscape in which a guy flashes back-and-forth between an amnesic state and a lived-out fantasy of murdering his wife. The highest praise any of these deserve is "laughable." Let the tittering begin.

Three... Extremes: A Cut Above

It recently dawned on me that Korea is the Ireland of Asia. As major influences go, it's got China and Japan to Ireland's U.S. and England. Plus, it's got a similar North-South, politically polarized split with the Southern part being the more celebratory half. (Are Protestants the Communists of Europe?) It wasn't politics that triggered this realization however. It was art. For just as the Emerald Isle, despite its diminutive size, smaller population, weaker role in the world, troubled history, etc., can go head-to-head with either America or Britain in terms of literature (Shaw, Wilde, Joyce, Swift), Korea can do the same with its big brothers in terms of film. Take a look at the movie Three... Extremes, a trilogy of horror flicks from Hong Kong ("Dumplings"), Korea ("Cut"), and Japan ("Box"). This triptych could easily serve as an argument for Korean moviemaking supremacy. Admittedly, Fruit Chan and Takashi Mike aren't their respective countries Wong Kar-wai or Kurosawa (whereas Park Chan-wook is his country's Park Chan-wook). But even so, when it comes to working within the horror genre, neither Hong Kong nor Tokyo comes close to Seoul's succubus of a film. In comparison to Park's Shavian tale of a film-extra hell-bent on leveling the playing field for heaven, Chan's Swiftian parable about a woman willing to eat fetuses to regain youth and Mike's not-too-wild dream of a Siamese twin look plain silly. Throw in a fantastic performance from Lim Won-hie as the crazy who can dance as well as he wields an axe, and you've got the makings of thriller that's not only visually stunning but highly entertaining as well.