ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Anssi Vartiainen In my experiences Korean films tend to be just as strange and baffling as their pop music is. And this film is certainly the crowning achievement of that. Loosely adapting the Hans Christian Andersen children's tale The Little Match Girl, it tells about Ju (Hyun-sung Kim), a Chinese restaurant delivery guy, who dreams about becoming a pro-gamer like his friend Lee (Jin-pyo Kim). But, we often dreams about things we really shouldn't, as Ju finds out when he shows kindness to a lonely beggar girl selling lighters and gets pulled into a strange video game where the goal is to act out the events of the original tale… while also dodging other players who all want to kill you.It's weird, it's nonsensical, it's utterly bizarre. And like it almost always is with these types of films, either you love or you hate it. Personally I love it, to an extent. I still require a semblance of order when it comes to storytelling and the flow of the plot, and this particular movie is barely acceptable in that regard. Especially the start of the second act is very hard to follow, style over substance more than anything else, and it takes you a while to get back on track.The characters are also not very captivating. They're mostly in the story to pull off stunts and highly choreographed fight scenes, and while all of them are gimmicky, that is to say you can easily tell them apart from one another, they're not people in the real sense of the word. They're cardboard characters. Ju has probably the most character out of all of them, but even he doesn't really evolve all that much throughout the film. Mostly he's there to act as the audience surrogate.But, if you're going to watch this film, you're going to watch it for the visuals, the craziness. And for that it's a very good film. It's always moving, always doing something. Sure, the special effects are not as great as they could have been, had they had an A-list budget, but they're good enough to support the story and only really start to show their cheapness during the final climax when the crazy visuals ramp up.And that's the movie in a nutshell. It's more style than anything, but the style itself is very pleasing, and you certainly won't be bored. Is it for anyone? Absolutely not. But if I have aroused your curiosity, then I definitely recommend giving it a chance.

Kosinus ... the makers watched Matrix? perhaps Avalon? thinking: we can do that, too? well... cut out all those oh so funny scenes, focus on the story-line and you get a nice and interesting movie. Still fun to watch, just don't expect too much and try not to compare this one to any other movie...

tofuman-3 The movie bombed in the box office. It was one of the most expensive movies to make in Korea. I surely hope this doesn't deter the most innovative and honest artist in Korea from making more masterpieces.The movie seems strangely main-stream compared to his former movies. (Lies, Bad movie,...) When I first heard that he's making a big-budget fantasy action film, I was worried because I didn't want him to waste time making the same undistinguishable movies as others. But still, I gave him a benefit of doubt, and went to see the movie anyway. And I'm very glad I did.The story seems borrowed from that old mother goose PC adventure game where everything in the tale is mixed up and your mission is to fix things up so that events unfold according to the original mother goose story.We have a boy and a girl, who meet in a virtual reality game. We are introduced to many 'colorful' game characters, the most interesting of which is a biker of ambiguous sexuality who's played by the chinese transsexual dancer Sing Jin.The plot is actually quite incomprehensible and much hyped eye-candies are nowhere near remarkable. Those are the main reason the movie failed in the box office. But probably those are not the point of the movie. I think the movie is trying to show the harsh reality veiled under the high-tech sheen. The power levels and the favorite things of characters - which are shown on-screen when the game characters are introduced - do not tell anything about the character just as the praises about the fast economic growth of Korea doesn't tell about the cultural, emotional vacancy at the heart of the country.

Killer-40 This is not a follow-up of Kaurismäki's MATCH GIRL - although director Jang Sun-woo is an ironic and sometimes cynical artist. His unpredictability led to the documentary-styled LIES in 1999, a sadomasochistic story that is unconventionally introduced by one actor's explanation about why he chose to participate in the movie. THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL took almost four years to be completed and has those moments, too, where we are reminded that we are 'only' watching a movie. Fantasy film fans usually don't like this breaking-up of the narrative. That might be the reason for a box-office failure of the film in Korea so far. It's budget is one of the highest in the history of Korean film (10 m USD) and justified by all the spectacular stunts and shoot-outs and digital references that seem to say laconically: What's all that fuzz about MATRIX? As we know from former movies of Jang Sun-woo (like A PETAL) he never forgets to comment on social topics. The story is about a guy who needs to log into a virtual game to get rich through fighting other players and saving the poor and starving MATCH GIRL (a figure known from Andersen's tales). Whether you feel computer games are ridiculous after the movie or you reflect about unjustified possession ratios in your society, the movie with its choice of different though on first sight unhappy endings might leave you puzzled - exactly the way it is done. "Techno-Taoist" was this approach to the SF-genre called, and surely those who expect martial arts and BULLETS IN THE HEAD-action will be as pleased as those who look for another playful and wise Jang Sun-woo flick. Be advised not to leave the movie during the end credits. It should be 124 minutes long ...