Attack The Gas Station! Review

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say this is a movie Sal probably wouldn't like. (Actually, very little of it involves baseball or defaming the great American sport, so maybe he would. Who knows. Well, I guess Sal knows. So... there you go. Sal knows. Ask him.)

Woo, alright. This was tough. It was a near-miss but ultimately I'm going to go with hit for this one. Keep up the good work Bob!

The movie starts with opening POV shots of driving around at night in Korea set to some pretty terrible music that is sort of like Korea's idea of mid-90's alternarock. Kind of like Korean Jane's Addiction. Come to think of it, the opening is extremely similar to the beginning of HBO's Entourage. Shame on you, Entourage. I will never not have that stupid Jane's Addiction song stuck somewhere in my head. It's like there's a little annoying voice in my head going, "I wanna be your superheroo," every day, at all the times, but just at a very low volume.

Anyway, after that the movie sets up its seemingly simple plot: A group of four disenfranchised Korean youth, looking vaguely like some kind of Korean Smash Mouth, decide to attack a gas station.

And that's it. That's the set up.

Now, as far as set ups go, you've got to give it to them. That's a ballsy move. And the rest of the movie includes similar ballsy moves on the part of the director and writer. I think that's ultimately why I gave this movie a 'hit.' I can't say I always completely enjoyed it, but I always admired it for its goofball take on apathy, violence, and power dynamics.

What I also liked about the movie was its use of canted angles to illustrate those power dynamics. At first I thought it was kind of gimmicky and lame, but it grew on me and it's a visual choice I think really worked.

Other than that, there's gang wars, weird montages of people eating Chinese food while standing in a circle, strange musical numbers by Korean Backstreet Boys-types, lots of bad music, and a few goofy laughs. This definitely wasn't a knock out of the park, Bob. I'd say it was more of a single. But hey, you got on base.

P.S. I hate Jane's Addiction.