REAL FICTION is a mildly enjoyable "experimental" rage-spree style film whose most notable feature is that the entire film was shot with no retakes using several cameramen in a little over three hours. An ambitious undertaking on behalf of director Ki-Duk Kim, but unfortunately the only really impressive aspect of the film.
A young street artist lives a miserable life of solitude and timidity, where he spends his days drawing sub-par portraits in a park for money and is constantly beaten and harassed by local thugs. In a strange and confusing scene, the artist comes face-to-fact (so to speak) with his "dark-side" and decides to take revenge on all those in his past who have wronged him. The rest of the film is a somewhat entertaining but ultimately unsatisfyingly typical vengeance film where the artist goes from one person to the next in his past, taking out those that contributed to his current anti-social and introverted state...until a "twist" ending reveals that the whole film may not have played out as the viewer may have been lead to believe...
My first problem with REAL FICTION is the subtitling. It seemed very "off" in places, and made it hard to follow conversations at several points. Another issue, is that with a film as straight-forward as this, the violence was very weak and understated. This is understandable in the fact that I assume the director was trying to make some sort of point by shooting a film in three hours, and therefore may not have been able to stage better on-screen violence - but honestly, shoot it in 6 hours and give me some more of the red-stuff. I like rage/revenge films as a whole, but they're just no fun without the "payoff". Also the twist ending - though not ridiculously over-done as has been seen in many films nowdays, seems a little too obvious and done as a way to add another element to a relatively dull plot. On the up-side - the acting is well-done for a film with no re-takes, and to be honest, had I not been aware of the way the film was being shot, I probably would have never known that the "no-retakes" aspect was it's claim-to-fame. Also, as stated before, REAL FICTION was relatively entertaining (as in, I didn't fall asleep...) it just wasn't very original. I would say that it may be worth a look to experimental film fans or rage/revenge films for a one-time view, but I think the draw of this film will be more about HOW it was done, not the film itself, and personally - I'm more about the finished product. 6/10
A young street artist lives a miserable life of solitude and timidity, where he spends his days drawing sub-par portraits in a park for money and is constantly beaten and harassed by local thugs. In a strange and confusing scene, the artist comes face-to-fact (so to speak) with his "dark-side" and decides to take revenge on all those in his past who have wronged him. The rest of the film is a somewhat entertaining but ultimately unsatisfyingly typical vengeance film where the artist goes from one person to the next in his past, taking out those that contributed to his current anti-social and introverted state...until a "twist" ending reveals that the whole film may not have played out as the viewer may have been lead to believe...
My first problem with REAL FICTION is the subtitling. It seemed very "off" in places, and made it hard to follow conversations at several points. Another issue, is that with a film as straight-forward as this, the violence was very weak and understated. This is understandable in the fact that I assume the director was trying to make some sort of point by shooting a film in three hours, and therefore may not have been able to stage better on-screen violence - but honestly, shoot it in 6 hours and give me some more of the red-stuff. I like rage/revenge films as a whole, but they're just no fun without the "payoff". Also the twist ending - though not ridiculously over-done as has been seen in many films nowdays, seems a little too obvious and done as a way to add another element to a relatively dull plot. On the up-side - the acting is well-done for a film with no re-takes, and to be honest, had I not been aware of the way the film was being shot, I probably would have never known that the "no-retakes" aspect was it's claim-to-fame. Also, as stated before, REAL FICTION was relatively entertaining (as in, I didn't fall asleep...) it just wasn't very original. I would say that it may be worth a look to experimental film fans or rage/revenge films for a one-time view, but I think the draw of this film will be more about HOW it was done, not the film itself, and personally - I'm more about the finished product. 6/10