Movie Title: R-Point / Arpointeu
Director: Su-chang Kong
Date Released: August 13th, 2004
Date Seen: March 31st, 2013
Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review
This movie follows a group of Korean soldiers in the Vietnam war sent to investigate another group of soldiers, who went missing 6 months ago. They were presumed dead, but transmissions have started coming in – indicating that they may still be alive. The team heads out to the strategic island known as R-Point – only to find that they are being haunted by something.
The entire movie is confusing as hell. I don’t know if the copy I watched just had horrible subtitles, but I was routinely confused by what was going on. They hardly mentioned the characters names in normal conversation, so you’d never connect a name to a face of the soldiers. But then, they’d start having a major discussion about Corporal blah blah. Who is corporal blah blah? I have no idea, because you never introduced his name/face to me. They didn’t just do this with a couple of characters – they did it with almost all of them, except the main lieutenants. They also commonly would introduce an idea – then do a flash back to explain part of it, then later another flash back to further explain it. It just led to the confusing nature of the movie. Again, I’m not sure if it was just the copy I had had bad subtitles making me miss information – but I just was confused a lot so I didn’t care for the movie. The plot is simple to understand the general gist of the movie – but if you wanted the actual details as to what each of the soldiers was really like in real life (important to the story), then you’re going to not enjoy the movie as much, in my opinion.
There’s very limited gore/violence, just some shoot out scenes, which result in a fair amount of blood all over some people – but I still didn’t find it grotesque at all. It just looked like they took some fake blood, splattered or poured (it literally happens once) it on the guys, and called it good. So, not gross, at all.
The acting was alright – since I had a hard time with the characters, I never connected to them at all. In fact, I found the majority of the characters complete idiots and annoying as hell. They always were whining and screaming at someone. For example, when they think they’re being haunted at one point, two of the guys start screaming and crying at their lieutenant to tell them if they are being haunted. It reminded me of a little kid screaming and crying at their mom to confirm something completely obvious had just happened. No thank you. They were also idiots in that at one point they have some type of hard evidence of the haunting. Yeah, it’s still not definitive evidence, but they have SOMETHING. What do they do? Burn it. For no real reason, other than saying “no one will believe us anyway.” Well, now they definitely won’t, since you don’t have that evidence any more. Idiots.
I’d say don’t waste your time with the movie, unless you really like supernatural Korean horror. And maybe can read Korean. Otherwise, skip it.
Part 2 – In-Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis
There’s an alright synopsis here.
The dancing scene was quite hilarious, even before it turned into the tape of the murders. They were all dancing SO awkwardly. I was kind of happy when the shoot out tape started just because it made them stop guessing.
I don’t really have anything else to say about this movie that is spoilery… because it’s pretty dang predictable at the surface level, despite being confusing in little details.
Overall: 4/10
A mediocre supernatural thriller with a confusing plot and whiny characters.
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