Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version) DVD Region 2
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YesAsia Editorial Description
Homicide detective Jae Shin is called in to investigate five accounts of murder that occurred within the same town. Based on the nature of the killing methods, the detective concludes the case as a serial murder. However, despite his efforts, the killer still remains at large. Concerned over his friend's frustration, Jae Shin's longtime friend Kyung Joo, a mystery novelist lends a helping hand - perhaps his sharp wit can shed some light into the matter. But Kyung Joo is shocked when he discovers that the killer has been fashioning the murders exactly as they appear on his novel. The truth is, Kyung Joo himself committed a murder ten years ago, but has been successful in repressing his killing urge for some time. Now, with his past secret on the verge of discovery, Kyung Joo knows time is running out.
Technical Information
| Product Title: | Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version) Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version) Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version) 俺たちの街 Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version) |
| Artist Name(s): | Lee Seon Gyun | Oh Man Seok | Ryu Deok Hwan 李成申 | 吳 萬錫 | 柳德煥 李成申 | Oh Man Seok | 柳德焕 イ・ソンギュン | オ・マンソク | リュ・ドクファン 이선균 | 오만석 | 류덕환 |
| Director: | Jung Gil Young Jung Gil Young Jung Gil Young チョン・ギリョン 정길영 |
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| Release Date: | 2009-07-24 |
| Publisher Product Code: | GNBF-1261 |
| Disc Format(s): | DVD |
| Region Code: | 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, Greenland and the Middle East (including Egypt) What is it? |
| Publisher: | Geneon Universal Entertainment |
| Shipment Unit: | 1 What is it? |
| YesAsia Catalog No.: | 1019762509 |
Product Information
猟奇的な連続殺人事件が発生した。その手口は、女性を十字架型に吊るすという奇妙なもの。凶悪犯罪課のチェシン刑事は捜査に着手するが、何の糸口も見つけられずにいた。一方、推理小説家のギョンジュが全く同じ手口で殺人を犯した。しかし真犯人は別にいたのだ。その真犯人・ヒョイはギャンジュを探し始めた…。 ■映像特典：メイキング映像／オリジナル特報／オリジナル予告編
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- Our Town (DVD) (Special Edition) (Korea Version) DVD Region 3
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YumCha! Asian Entertainment Reviews and Features
Professional Review of "Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version)"
This professional review refers to Our Town (DVD) (Special Edition) (Korea Version)
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Our Town takes the tried and tested serial killer genre and gives it a bit of a shake up by offering the viewer not one, but two crazy murderers on the rampage. Although this may sound like a somewhat desperate gimmick, first time director Jung Gil Young uses this unusual premise to craft a taut, sick thriller which provides an intriguing look into the minds of murderers. The film is set in a small, unnamed town in Korea where four women have been found butchered and strung up. The case is being investigated by detective Jae Shin (Lee Seon Gyun, recently in A Cruel Attendance and The Great White Tower) and is proving difficult to solve, not least since it appears that a copycat may in fact have committed the most recent murder. Rather inconveniently, the prime suspect is in fact Jae Shin's friend, the down and out, hard drinking mystery writer Kyung Joo (Oh Man Seok, also in Soo and The Man in the Vineyard), who certainly seems connected to the bloody crimes. However, although Kyung Joo is undoubtedly guilty of something and is clearly harbouring some dark secrets from the past, the real killer is in fact lurking in the shadows, planning his own sinister campaign. Our Town is an ambitious mix of genres, with director Jung working in elements of crime thriller, detective mystery, horror shocker and psychological character drama to create a darkly unique and original film. The two killer premise works very well, and the film plays out like a three way game of cat and mouse, with plenty of twists and turns thrown in along the way to keep things relatively unpredictable. Jung frequently toys with viewer expectations and is quite sly in his use of misdirection, showing a good knowledge of the material and genre cinematic techniques, though thankfully he never overplays his hand, and the film comes across as being clever and challenging rather than frustrating. Since the identities of the killers are never in any doubt (if nothing else, they are pictured on the DVD box, which is a shame as viewers completely unaware of who is who would likely be considerably more shocked by the film's first half hour), the mystery comes in form of the motives behind and the messages intended by the murders, and the link between the three men. This is arguably far more engaging than the usual structure for such films, which tends only to revolve around the police hunting down an obscure murderer. Here, although things tie together a little too neatly in the end, the film works as a great exercise in the suspension of disbelief, as Jung creates his own twisted little universe in which the plot makes horribly perfect sense. It is obviously quite a brave move for any film to focus on killers as characters, and indeed Our Town features no real sympathetic protagonist or figure for the viewer to identify with. There is no quest for redemption, or indeed any real kind of personal journey, and as such the film is a cold, grim affair, with no discernable innocents. Wisely, Jung switches between his characters, weaving their stories skilfully together into a puzzle of sin and deceit, which though disturbing is certainly gripping. It helps that the two murderers both make for interesting characters, with neither being simplistic or unconvincing fiends. Kyung Joo in particular is a fascinating figure, with hints of underlying psychosis right from the start, indulging himself in violent fantasies, and who becomes even less pleasant as things progress and even more skeletons are dragged screaming from their closets. Jung's direction is assured and elegant, especially impressive considering that this marks his debut feature. He shows an excellent use of saturated colour, nicely setting the mood and drumming up a suitably eerie and unsettling atmosphere whilst keeping things grounded. It is this believable edge which really makes the film work, as the viewer is convinced that the twisted story could certainly take place in any town, anywhere. Although the film is slow in places, and could perhaps have done with a little trimming here and there, Jung never loses his focus, and includes a good number of bloody murders to make for an intense, visceral viewing experience. This also ensures that Our Town hits home in the intended fashion, and it stands as an entertainingly grotesque mystery thriller. Of course, it is probably best suited to more adventurous viewers, though for those happy enough to delve into the moral void, a fascinatingly dark journey awaits. by James Mudge - BeyondHollywood.com |
Customer Review of "Our Town (DVD) (Japan Version)"
See all my reviews
March 10, 2008
This customer review refers to Our Town (DVD) (Special Edition) (Korea Version)
The Fatally Disconnected
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In certain everyday circumstances, like traveling to work or moving around shopping plazas, we can become simultaneously and instinctively aware of the happiness around, but also a detached coldness that permeates our society. It doesn't effect us, but can sadden the heart sometimes, especially if you smile and you don't get a warmth of return. We do live in our own personal zones - work, friends, family, country, etc., and have limited integration (even with age), but naturally and subjectively accept and perceive the 'stranger' as alien, the outsider of our personal zones. Each to the other. For most of us, this is the natural aspect of things, and only causes mild effect by over sensitivities. Most likely, too, what we see in negative unspoken communique in others at times, can be our own negative traits projected onto others, that we reject. In a nut shell, we can be to subjective. Still, our worlds, our towns can feel like a sad cold place to live and find love in, sometimes, and a mirror world of indifferences due to jaded cynicisms about human conduct (unusually sexual), can produce a sense of despair and loneliness to our souls. We are all integrative creatures, that all need love in what that really means, but when love and caring is made absent, can steel the soul. Sometimes, too, as in this movie and of the blighted characters here, where one becomes a serial killer and another a murderer, that sense of loneliness, love rejection and loss is seen as an overdrive, and effects the soul too far - contorting that sense of lost love into anger, numbness, rage and drastically towards cold blooded actions. Certainly by this movie's ending, does it describe a bad snapshot of the hell they both fall into, and of its "Nowhere to Hide" type rain finale. Its the same similar scenarios as in the Vengeance films - Lady / Mr and Oldboy, and although the characters there had 'reasons' to fulfill, they still shared the nature of the two lost souls in this film, who have been 'plugged out' of the normality of society, and the love and comfort that all human beings should be having. Well, that sounds a bit of a cold description of what this is all about, but certainly a warm heart is not what you are going to encounter here. This is a dark and tragic murder thriller about a crazed and calculative serial killer, who murders 4 women and then displays their bodies in crucified form on railings, leaving an effigy of them on wooden crucifixes. As like similar films with Christian religious leanings, this also features a pseudo religiosity of themes about twisted aspects of the cross and Christ's split blood (although doesn't really go beyond the basic symbolic really, to any form of deeper psychological sense). This is how the film opens, with a school caretaker attendant going about his business, only to grimly discover such a macabre form on one of the school railings of the inner yard, arms outstretched like a crucified Christ. The film's introductory description also mentions that another three women were also killed in the same manner. This all then moves quickly onto the morose and moody Kyung Joo, a young man with a tragic past of losing his parents in a house fire, and of him then living alone in a flat, with his only objective in writing murder thriller stories on his computer, as a means of trying to have them published and earning some money. Money that Kyung Joo doesn't have, and owes his landlady fees for his lodgings, which she persistently asks him for. This causes constant angst and rage in Kyung Joo, as he bangs his fist frustrated, on the neighboring wall at the loud pumping music vibrating off them. You can also tell by the green tinge filtered into the colour of this film, too (similar to the Japanese "Pulse" and "The Matrix" films), that you can expect by the atmosphere of moodiness , angst and tension, that a raging and jealous vengeance is lurking around the corner. Kyung Joo rarely shows much self humiliation or compassionate feelings either, that could possibly re-new his soul, and the only warm sense of things is when he gets to meet his old school friend, Jae Shin, who is, ironically, a police man working on the serial killer murders. As a murder thriller, this displays quite a lot of gory and violently nasty killings. Kyung Joo is certainly keyed in as the prime suspect as the movie gets under way, even near the beginning, but after 35 minutes or so, you find a double shift of possibilities of what is going in here. There are in fact two killers. Kyung Joo as a psychotic nature that you are aware of right from the beginning, and a nasty encounter of him and a young couple, (even though only the workings of his own mind), reflect the tragic past of his life and the nature of his unbalanced mind. He is also not the only one 'at large'. Another unusual young man, who works for himself at a convenience store, sells Kyung Joo a new photo frame to replace his smashed and broken one, that contained his lost mother and father's photo. Here this young man learns of another murder that has just happened in the town on a news report, featured on the TV in his shop, and feels that Kyung Joo is the killer. He sends him an instant message to his phone, asking why he killed her. After frowning and quizzically looking at his phone message, Kyung Joo then leaves the shop with his photo frame. The young lad then enters his living quarters in the shop, where he discovers that his dog has decided to eat his dinner. As this brings about a following scene later on, with him eating a freshly made lunch opposites his now dead and stuffed colley, you realize that he may also not be quite right in the compassion department. There is then a story thread of these two primary suspects to the murders of the 4 women, and from then on you begin to learn, by constant flashbacks of these two characters as children and teenagers, of what caused them to become sinister killers. Although justification is a word not to be used here. More murders, happen of course, relating to their grim pasts. Although this film deals with blighted and bad life starts with the two main protagonists, its difficult to find a great deal of compassion for them by their deeds. Especially with one of them (its plain obvious in this film that you don't get a big twist at the end, and of who is doing what), where his 'block mind' and absence of any sense of compassion could save his soul, and of the last 'hellish' snapshot in the rain that concludes in sex and death. This certainly does not have a pretty ending whatsoever. Acting to all of this, though, is brilliant as always, and the young actor Deok Hwan Ryu who also featured in the movies "My Son" and "Like a Virgin" is excellent in his role. I don't want to say as what, as there are two possibles with this film. This is a very good movie of its type, that isn't your run of the mill type killer thriller, and could become a firm favorite in future. Certainly not an easy watch (and I'm not always into watching this serial killer stuff......I much prefer ghosts!), and heavily disturbing is indubitably not for the faint hearted. |
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