TOO TIRED TO DIE (1998)
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2004
It is heartbreaking to find out that someone can spend years trying to
make a movie only to receive poor reviews for all his troubles.
Something like this happened to South Korean filmmaker Wongsuk
Chin with his 1998 drama TOO TIRED TO DIE.
The plot begins in medieval Baghdad where young Arab (played by
Rizwan Manji) begins his centuries-old flight from Death (played by
Mira Sorvino). In modern-day New York Death catches him thanks to
Kenji (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro), young unemployed Japanese
expatriate who spent years milking his parents and exchanging in
pseudo-intellectual discussion with his snobbish friends - Italian
expatriate Fabrizio (played by Michael Imperioli) and Balzac Man
(played by Jeffrey Wright). As an expression of gratitude, Death
informs Kenji that he is about to die in 12 hours and advises him to
spend this limited time most wisely.
TOO TIRED TO DIE uses some interesting concepts - man forced to
live a life in twelve hours and Death in the form of beautiful and
melancholic woman - but Wongsuk Chin apparently didn't know
how to build on them. There is some black humour in the film, but
Chin gradually begins to view his film as an opportunity to pay
homage to Bergman, John Woo and existentialist philosophy. The
viewers begin to notice film's derivative nature as well as the lack of
proper drama. The protagonist, although well-played by Takeshi
Kaneshiro, is simply too boring and too ordinary to be interesting to
audience, even when put in such extreme situation. Mira Sorvino
fares much better in a role that allows her to display fluency in
Oriental languages. Some of her scenes only make film longer,
though. After violent and un-cathartic ending most of the audience
would agree that the poor reviews for this film were richly deserved.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
Review written on October 11th 2004
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian
http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society
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