I'm always one for a good martial arts flick, so when I saw the DVD box for KILTRO I was excited. "The best...since Ong Bak" it proclaimed, underneath a picture of a muscle guy in some weird mask pulling off a typical kung fu move. The blurb has five shots of a weapon-wielding hero tackling a street gang, warning of strong bloody violence and looking absolutely fab. So I bought it, took it home and...
Found out that the box was a lie. The action shots on the back – ALL of them – come from one single, five-minute fight sequence at the film's climax. This isn't an action film as all, more of a romance. There are virtually NO fight scenes in the film aside from that one big set-piece, and even that one isn't too good, with obvious wire work and some pretty awful CGI blood effects. Instead, we get some sappy story about an idiot member of a street gang and his stalker obsession with a pretty Korean girl. Soon enough there's a bad guy killing some people, and this idiot guy must go and train and then fight him, blah blah blah...the kind of story that's been done to death.
The novelty here is that this is a Chilean film – and for me, like many others I suspect, my first Chilean movie. Sadly, this lacks none of the expressiveness or style in the similarly South American CITY OF GOD: instead, it's content to rip-off Hollywood with an inappropriate spaghetti western soundtrack, cardboard sets, and a whole dearth of imagination and interest. The characters are boring, the actors bad, and the storyline sucks. Why we're supposed to care about any of this, I don't know.
The biggest disappointment lies with the hero, Marko Zaror. Now, Zaror isn't much of an actor: his facial expressions are often amusing rather than believable, and his street thug character offers the viewer no sympathy whatsoever. But, to be honest, that's par for the course for an action flick. The crime is that Zaror is a great fighter in his few brief moments of action, so why on earth didn't the director utilise that talent more, rather than focus on his acting? ONG BAK this isn't: that film was perfect in recognising Tony Jaa as a fine martial artist, throwing him into the midst of fight or chase scenes all the while, but KILTRO goes the opposite way and is just dull as a result. Dull as dishwater in fact. Let's hope that Zaror finds himself a director who recognises this big guy's appeal and casts him in more appropriate roles.
Found out that the box was a lie. The action shots on the back – ALL of them – come from one single, five-minute fight sequence at the film's climax. This isn't an action film as all, more of a romance. There are virtually NO fight scenes in the film aside from that one big set-piece, and even that one isn't too good, with obvious wire work and some pretty awful CGI blood effects. Instead, we get some sappy story about an idiot member of a street gang and his stalker obsession with a pretty Korean girl. Soon enough there's a bad guy killing some people, and this idiot guy must go and train and then fight him, blah blah blah...the kind of story that's been done to death.
The novelty here is that this is a Chilean film – and for me, like many others I suspect, my first Chilean movie. Sadly, this lacks none of the expressiveness or style in the similarly South American CITY OF GOD: instead, it's content to rip-off Hollywood with an inappropriate spaghetti western soundtrack, cardboard sets, and a whole dearth of imagination and interest. The characters are boring, the actors bad, and the storyline sucks. Why we're supposed to care about any of this, I don't know.
The biggest disappointment lies with the hero, Marko Zaror. Now, Zaror isn't much of an actor: his facial expressions are often amusing rather than believable, and his street thug character offers the viewer no sympathy whatsoever. But, to be honest, that's par for the course for an action flick. The crime is that Zaror is a great fighter in his few brief moments of action, so why on earth didn't the director utilise that talent more, rather than focus on his acting? ONG BAK this isn't: that film was perfect in recognising Tony Jaa as a fine martial artist, throwing him into the midst of fight or chase scenes all the while, but KILTRO goes the opposite way and is just dull as a result. Dull as dishwater in fact. Let's hope that Zaror finds himself a director who recognises this big guy's appeal and casts him in more appropriate roles.