Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

ScoobyMint Disappointment for a huge fan!

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

cockpistol Makes you realise the implication of every act and makes to judge the next. You wont go wrong, but will make you wish you were.

shu-fen The movie enjoys huge success in both commentary and box-office figure in both Korea and Mainland China since its premiere in 2005. Strangely, though Hong Kong does import large bunches of Korean movies in the past five years, no cinema or distributor's eyes were on this. Its DVD was just out last weekend yet it has already become a top hit DVD in the Mainland.An obvious reason for its being slighted could be: Hong Kong viewers may flatly compare the female images of Leslie Cheung in Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Jun-gi Lee's (Gong-gil), a young Korean screen hopeful (to-date 24 years old) who is known for his commitment to the industry. (He sings, dances, acts in TV and movie, attends demonstrations for protecting Korea's film industry against the authority's unfavourable policies…) And the truth is not distant from our guess, audience can just link up these two movies as Lee frankly did admit that he has watched "Farewell" for 20+ times before the camera rolled its first round. When being promoted in China, it was even nicknamed "Farewell my concubine - the Korean interpretation"! In actuality, besides the look of the two feminine protagonists, no other similarities of these two movies exist! And thus, Hong Kong may not be that interested in the story or the presentation as we have already had our late sweet-heart Gor-gor Leslie Cheung.The storyline is simple with some funny glitches. Anyway, it is not the story but the wardrobe, the striking feminine look of Lee, the traditional Korean street-acting, "Darwaz" (High altitude tightrope dancing/walking -- originated from the present Xinjiang area/Central Asia. There it is taken to be a sport rather than performing art in this film.) catch my attention more. To me, a Chinese, they are not strangers but with novelties. If you like to know a bit of Korea's older days, this may satisfy some of your wish.

stract Trust South Korea to produce nice tragedies again and again. First it was "Friend", then "Joint Security Area", and now "The King and the Clown", which is about two male clowns being arrested for staging a comedy which mocks the King, and would be spared the death sentence if they could humor the King as much as they did to the civilians. This sounds a little like "Brokeback Mountain" taking place in Korea, but the speech and behavior the two clowns have towards each other is carefully crafted that they make it look more like a case of brotherhood amongst them. However, that does not in any way dilutes the affections we see between the two male friends, which are incredibly genuine. It is this genuine affection that makes this such a touching show to watch. Also, this is not just romance; this has elements of a thriller and social commentary interwoven within the plot. And all these roll out just nicely and rightly paced. No wonder it becomes one of the biggest selling movies in Korea, despite its modest production cost.

Purpur Overall it's an interesting story with good characters except the special but vague Gong-gil. The story goes smoothly up but doesn't make a neat and powerful ending. Perhaps the 4-hour edition is better? For people who want to get a historical oriental feel, the film is an eyeopener of course. But for Chinese like me, and many of my friends, the Korean culture shown in the film resembles Chinese culture in too many ways - only in a simpler and noisier form - that it fails to attract.There are also some laughable minor goof around. Korean characters were not likely be in official statements at that time, as the king then heavily suppressed them and used Chinese characters instead. And the Chinese characters on the fan in the hand of an official around the year 1500, read "Tianxia Wei Gong" from "Sun Wen", the famous revolutionist that overthrew Qing Dynasty in China in 1911.