Resurrection of the Little Match Girl

This is not a follow-up of Kaurismäki's MATCH GIRL - although director Jang Sun-woo is an ironic and sometimes cynical artist. His unpredictability led to the documentary-styled LIES in 1999, a sadomasochistic story that is unconventionally introduced by one actor's explanation about why he chose to participate in the movie. THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL took almost four years to be completed and has those moments, too, where we are reminded that we are 'only' watching a movie. Fantasy film fans usually don't like this breaking-up of the narrative. That might be the reason for a box-office failure of the film in Korea so far. It's budget is one of the highest in the history of Korean film (10 m USD) and justified by all the spectacular stunts and shoot-outs and digital references that seem to say laconically: What's all that fuzz about MATRIX? As we know from former movies of Jang Sun-woo (like A PETAL) he never forgets to comment on social topics. The story is about a guy who needs to log into a virtual game to get rich through fighting other players and saving the poor and starving MATCH GIRL (a figure known from Andersen's tales). Whether you feel computer games are ridiculous after the movie or you reflect about unjustified possession ratios in your society, the movie with its choice of different though on first sight unhappy endings might leave you puzzled - exactly the way it is done. "Techno-Taoist" was this approach to the SF-genre called, and surely those who expect martial arts and BULLETS IN THE HEAD-action will be as pleased as those who look for another playful and wise Jang Sun-woo flick. Be advised not to leave the movie during the end credits. It should be 124 minutes long ...

the film purports to "parody" THE MATRIX, but instead how can you "parody" a movie if you spend just as much on the exact same special effects and pretty much re-did whole scenes and scenarios from the movie you're supposedly "making fun off?" if only the filmmakers/producers had taken the time to write a decent, original script and then shoot the movie as a straight drama instead of trying to "wink" at us, MATCH GIRL would have had the makings of a terrific sci-fi actioner. instead, it's just lame, not terribly bright (even though it tries very hard to be so), and its attempts at cleverness and breaking the 4th wall is rather understated and weak.

so, to all of you "hip" filmmakers out there, the lesson is this: if you got the budget for it, don't waste your money copying other movies and calling it a "parody". just make your own movie.

What kind of movie is this? Ummm.. well it's... weird. It's VERY weird actually... It's like someone wanted to make mixture of Fallen Angels, Nowhere to Hide, Avalon, Matrix, Unreal Tournament, Rainbow Six and... Little Matchgirl!

I have to say that I liked this movie. It was beautiful, strange and full of humor and spectacular action. The actors were good and the effects were mostly brilliant.

I'm not going to tell you anything about the plot, because... it's so strange, twisted and complicated and you don't really need to know it before you see the movie.

I think that the weirdest thing in this movie is that they used NYLON BEAT'S song in the movie! It was quite surrealistic to watch a South-Korean movie and listen to a FINNISH popmusic! I have to say that I HATE Nylon Beat, but somewhy their music worked in this movie... and actually all music in this movie was quite good.

I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes to watch original an different movies..... this definitely is a DIFFERENT movie...

The movie bombed in the box office. It was one of the most expensive movies to make in Korea. I surely hope this doesn't deter the most innovative and honest artist in Korea from making more masterpieces.

The movie seems strangely main-stream compared to his former movies. (Lies, Bad movie,...) When I first heard that he's making a big-budget fantasy action film, I was worried because I didn't want him to waste time making the same undistinguishable movies as others. But still, I gave him a benefit of doubt, and went to see the movie anyway. And I'm very glad I did.

The story seems borrowed from that old mother goose PC adventure game where everything in the tale is mixed up and your mission is to fix things up so that events unfold according to the original mother goose story.

We have a boy and a girl, who meet in a virtual reality game. We are introduced to many 'colorful' game characters, the most interesting of which is a biker of ambiguous sexuality who's played by the chinese transsexual dancer Sing Jin.

The plot is actually quite incomprehensible and much hyped eye-candies are nowhere near remarkable. Those are the main reason the movie failed in the box office. But probably those are not the point of the movie. I think the movie is trying to show the harsh reality veiled under the high-tech sheen. The power levels and the favorite things of characters - which are shown on-screen when the game characters are introduced - do not tell anything about the character just as the praises about the fast economic growth of Korea doesn't tell about the cultural, emotional vacancy at the heart of the country.

As I was watching "Sungnyangpali sonyeoui jaerim" I felt that it had a lot of promise as a creative, over-the-top, self-conscious thrill ride with underlying social commentary on Korean popular culture. But I thought it fizzled off to a flat, unnatural conclusion that made the movie seem like it was reaching in vain for something higher. And in reaching, it lost within itself any potential for critical self-awareness.

The film is a pretty fair summary of late 90s, early 2000s Korean popular culture. The real-life pop-star playing a pop-star is comparable to having Justin Timberlake cameo as a teenie-bopper idol; and the other real-life pop-star who plays the champion pro-gamer is like having LL Cool J star in a dramatic role (with special emphasis on the word "dramatic"). Although I must admit that Kim Jin-pyo gave a pretty convincing and successfully comic performance. And, I guess it's only fitting that a country as wired as Korea and a popular culture that drives an arcade owner to his death by a combination of starvation and sleep deprivation brought on by a fortnight Starcraft marathon could produce such a feverishly obsessive movie that could just as well have been an elaborate role-playing computer game.

In any case, I still enjoyed the film for creatively blurring fantasy and reality. I think the movie opens up an interesting exploration into the eventual merging of cinema, video games, and music video into a true single-serving multimedia experience. Indeed, without the over-arching Halo/Doom/Area51 aura, I think the excessive violence and action sequencing would not have been able to escape being accused of being hackneyed and overtly borrowed, let alone be stomached. Kill Bill it is not, but I liked it and laughed quite heartily at the expense of my peers back in the motherland.