re:mote voices

Title: The Tube
Cast:Doo-Na Bae, Seok-Hoon Kim, Sang-Min Park
Director:Woon-Hak Baek

The Tube is a Korean thriller, which didn’t get a cinema release here, but is available on DVD. Filled with clichés and little details that remind of various blockbusters - like Speed, Lethal Weapon or the Bourne Identity - to some degree. With that Tube isn’t particularly an original piece of work. But within the context it does what it does reasonable well in a tight and consistent manner.

Take one renegade cop, who has been going a bit off the rails. Take shadowy villain who has some grudge to bear against the city. Give the two a certain level of history, gunfights and confrontations. Add a street kid, a cute teen girl who has something of a crush on the cop, and gets a little Chungking Express in the process. Then add the city underground - the Tube of the title - and a speeding train filled with explosives.

The girl has got close enough to the cop to realise that he is obsessed with the shadowy villain. So when she sees the shadowy villain she starts to follow him, but is soon spotted. Although she did manage to get a message to the cop to let him know where she was and what she had seen before becoming a hostage on a death train. From there the film is filled with showdowns, shoot outs, explosions, and maniac on a speeding train filled with hostages.

The Tube at times feels more silly than thrilling, but that is often the case with many comparable films. The silliest part coming towards the end - which might be considered a spoiler, but is so out of nowhere that it is an absurdity - where it is revealed that the train is on a collision course with a nuclear power station and could wipe out the whole city! A power station that wasn’t mentioned previously and has an underground train link aimed right at it!

DVD extras include the American trailer, which is one of those ones with the big over the top American voice over, and has been cut in such a way that it looks like an entirely different film. Which is something which always strikes me as a bad idea, because it creates a culture where people no longer trust trailers. Other than that it also has a making of feature and a pop video to go with the film, although there is no sign of the band/singer involved and instead it is just an extended trailer for the film.

Regardless take it for what it is and The Tube is fun. It is also good to see Doo-na Bae as the street kid, a Korean actress who has probably appeared in more of the Korean films that have hit the UK in the last couple of years than any other - having had parts in the wildly different Take Care Of My Cat and Sympathy For Mr Vengeance.