Riverbank Legends (AKA Bar Legend AKA Three Fellas) Review
With the Korean Wave hitting a major bump in the road over the past year or two, with more films making less money, speculation has run wild through the industry as to why. Has the market become saturated? Have tastes changed? Is there perhaps some racial element and a specifically anti-Korean backlash in markets that had previously been welcoming? Much of the speculation, however, seems to be overlooking the simplest and most obvious solution: as producers have rushed to get more product to market to ride the Wave they’ve been cranking out far too many films that, while pretty, simply lack any sort of depth. An industry that was one of the most vibrant and challenging in the world lost sight of the simple fact that without compelling characters and stories it all counts for nothing.
Enter Riverbank Legends, AKA Bar Legend, AKA Three Fellas. A film blessed with a fantastic sense of style and gorgeous cinematography reflected in the energetic marketing campaign it is also blighted with under developed characters, a muddy narrative style and a surprising lack of identity as far as what sort of film it wants to be and what it wants to say. It also has significant stretches where it is simply boring, a major problem for a supposed action comedy. The first clue that something may have gone wrong here comes in the marketing materials with posters, promo images, and a DVD cover featuring the young, pretty cast all dolled up in a series of poses, costumes and hairstyles that never once appear in the film. This is style over substance, folks, a film being sold on the basis that its trio of young stars can whip young girls into a frenzy.
The titular three fellas are Jeong-Gwon, Gyeong-Ro and Seong-Hyeon, a trio of aimless youth scrapping their way through high school simply because they have nothing better to do. Jeong-Gwon is the true fighter of the group, a largely silent force who communicates through his fists and feet. Seong-Hyeon is the academic, a quiet and bookish sort who, though less skilled than Jeong-Gwon, is a strong fighter himself. Though he feels no particular appeal to fighting Seong-Hyeon stands by Jeong-Gwon’s side out of loyalty to his friend, always looking to protect the group’s leader. Gyeong-Ro is the mouthpiece of the group, constantly spewing profane chatter with his only other skill being a seemingly limitless ability to take a physical beating.
Under the guidance of Jeong-Gwon the trio becomes the dominant force in their school and, once they become bored of this, expand their territory to include The Ditch – a nasty stretch of river running through their blue collar neighborhood which they force another gang out of. After graduation Jeong-Gwon leaves town to join a larger gang – leaving his friends rudderless in the process – while Seong-Gwon goes on to college and Gyeong-Ro becomes a flamboyant professional karaoke singer, teaching classes to groups of bored housewives. Their lives are generally pointless until a high powered gang arrives in town to force the local residents out to make room for a major land development and Jeong-Gwon reappears following a two year stint in prison. Joeng-Gwon and the lead gangster have a history, of course, and this leads to an inevitable confrontation.
So, the good. The film is beautifully shot, there’s no denying that. Production design is stellar and the camera work is very strong. The young actor playing Jeong-Gwon is a strong physical performer who acquits himself very well throughout the action sequences, which are plentiful and very well choreographed, albeit in that typical Korean style that favors brawling over any sort of martial arts showcase. The film also ends much stronger than it begins, enough so that it can’t be accused of being purely style over substance – there is some meat here it just happens to be a case of too little, too late.
The down sides come in primarily two areas: the characters and the story. The character issues are simple enough. The trio is badly under written with no attempt made whatsoever at going beneath the surface of Seong-Hyeon or Gyeong-Ro while Jeong-Gwon remains a total cipher until the final act. Seong-Hyon and Joeng-Gwon also share a basic reticence to their characters that means much of the film involves little more than the pair of them staring sullenly into space while Gyeong-Ro prattles on pointlessly and while his bluster may well be funny in Korean it doesn’t come across particularly well in translation.
The story issues are rather more complex. First, this is a film that simply doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it an action comedy? A coming of age story? A cautionary tale? It skips between elements of all three without ever spending enough time on any of them to really satisfy and without making any serious effort to integrate the different elements. Largely as a result of this core story elements are left weak and thin while too much time is spent on ultimately pointless side plots. What story there is is also very poorly presented with a narrative structure that is simply a mess. The narrative voice shifts abruptly part way through – moving from Seong-Hyeon’s perspective to what I assume is meant to be Jeong-Gwon’s – with the transition handled clumsily and for no particular reason. There is also an enormous over-reliance on flashback to fill in characters, back story and motivations a problem made even worse by the flashbacks being placed far too late in the film to be effective.
The enormous, sudden growth of the Korean film industry seems to have produced an accompanying boom in lazy, opportunistic film producers, people and companies who seem to believe that any film with certain plot points and marketing elements will inevitably be successful regardless of the overall quality of the story telling. It’s an unfortunate consequence of success and one that has done serious damage to such a promising industry in general and a great deal of young talent attached to undercooked projects rushed into production. There is significant talent on display here, both in front of and behind the camera, but it is talent largely squandered.
The Korean DVD release is up to the high levels of quality we’ve come to expect. The transfer is crisp and clean with excellent sound options and a clear English translation used for the subtitles. Subtitles are offered on the feature only with all of the bonus features in Korean only. The third disc of the three disc set is a second feature film, a low budget gangster offering that again features English subtitles.
