The Good, the Bad and the Weird

A Korean spaghetti western (bokumbap eastern?) set in 1930s Manchuria, Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad and the Weird (2008) has to be the emptiest movie I've seen in ages. Don't expect a story, just boring exposition in between shoot outs. This has a thin plot involving buried treasure (very thin), but I quickly lost track of, and lost interest in, who had the map and how all the interested parties (the Japanese army, the Koren liberation movement, a gang of bandits, the good, the bad and the weird) knew to converge on the same spot in the middle of the desert for--surprise, surprise--another big shoot out. The action scenes are incomprehensible with lots of movement and noise but little spatial continuity. Despite the attractive production design and scenery, this doesn't even rise to the level of good flashy trash.