Before i watched this, i knew STEVEN SEAGAL wasn't going to be in this movie much (despite the movie being marketed around his cameo) so i was expecting to wait, to see my favourite martial-artist perform his stuff. However, i was quite taken in by the rest of the movie, during this wait. JUN LEE plays a maverick cop, Kim (aren't they all?) who gets kicked out of the force, and finds himself lured back to his fighting days (he was once a jeet kune do champion) and the lure of the money, to fight the world cage fighting champ Jack Miller(SEAGAL) This sense of indecision, is heightened by his trying (and mostly failing) to single-handedly bring up his 8 year old daughter (who's actually the best thing in this movie) and the fact that SHE is doing just as much looking after HIM (due to his drinking and brawling) Things are not helped when a familiar (feared dead) face from the past comes between father and daughter. And everything comes to a head, when gangsters kidnap the young child, in order to force kim to lose the fight against miller. And it's a race against time to find the girl, before kim loses more than his title.
Whilst not on the artistic and emotional level as a TAKESHI KITANO, the movie has it's aspirations (and it's plot is a little similar to HANA-BI) and as mentioned, the young actress playing the daughter, is a joy to behold (carefuly balancing sweetness with an adult-like attitude) and she certainly knows how to belt out the tears (quite convincingly!) but the movie itself is falsely advertised as an 'action' movie....it is not. Imagine a Korean 'KRAMER VS KRAMER' with medium level violence, and you're on the right track. SEAGAL, when he arrives, gives a pretty confident performance (for all of about 8 minutes!) and even though a lot of the long takes look doubled, he still has amazing hand speed. But i think his appearance, was more of a favour to the director. There's nothing wrong with SEAGAL taking a different role, but he does need to put more of an input, in different movies like this one (a bit of extra background material on his character, would be helpfull)
All in all, though, CLEMENTINE is a good movie (different to most Korean action movies) and the young girls out-take at the end of the movie (she proclaims her love for SEAGAL!) is the icing on a very 'different' kind of cake.
More SEAGAL would have helped, but nevertheless, a solid 7 out of 10
Whilst not on the artistic and emotional level as a TAKESHI KITANO, the movie has it's aspirations (and it's plot is a little similar to HANA-BI) and as mentioned, the young actress playing the daughter, is a joy to behold (carefuly balancing sweetness with an adult-like attitude) and she certainly knows how to belt out the tears (quite convincingly!) but the movie itself is falsely advertised as an 'action' movie....it is not. Imagine a Korean 'KRAMER VS KRAMER' with medium level violence, and you're on the right track. SEAGAL, when he arrives, gives a pretty confident performance (for all of about 8 minutes!) and even though a lot of the long takes look doubled, he still has amazing hand speed. But i think his appearance, was more of a favour to the director. There's nothing wrong with SEAGAL taking a different role, but he does need to put more of an input, in different movies like this one (a bit of extra background material on his character, would be helpfull)
All in all, though, CLEMENTINE is a good movie (different to most Korean action movies) and the young girls out-take at the end of the movie (she proclaims her love for SEAGAL!) is the icing on a very 'different' kind of cake.
More SEAGAL would have helped, but nevertheless, a solid 7 out of 10