Recycle Your Westerns

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More About

• Sergio Leone
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Telluride
• Ji-woon Kim
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Spaghetti Westerns have come full circle. Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone ripped on Akira Kurosawa’s samurai adventure Yojimbo, and now Korean director Ji-woon Kim is aping Leone with his The Good, the Bad, and the Weird. Much like the original, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the 2008 Korean film follows three not-quite-amigos as they battle it out to be the first to find hidden treasure. There’s the Good, a square jawed bounty hunter; the Bad, a suave hitman in a suit; and the Weird, a slapstick thief in a goofy hat.

It would be easy to write it off as another camp knock-off of a classic film, but well-crafted action sequences (think capoeira-like fluidness but with pistols, train robberies, and horses) saves The Good, the Bad, and the Weird from being complete kitsch. The film received critical acclaim all last year, pulling Official Selection nominations from Cannes, Toronto, and Telluride film festivals.
Fri., May 28, 8:55 p.m.; Sat., May 29, 8:55 p.m.; Sun., May 30, 8:55 p.m., 2010