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[REVIEW
> TOO TIRED TO DIE]
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| 04/16/2001 |
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Despite
some haphazardly inspired moments, "Too Tired to Die" falls
short of its ambitions. As much as there's so much going on
in the movie, so much of it also seems idiosyncratic, incongruent
or insignificant. |
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Reviewed By Quentin Lee
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| "Too Tired to Die" opens with a high-energy
silent-movie-like montage in Old Baghdad where a young
Arab man flees from Death, a woman in a veil played by
Mira Sovino. This imaginative sequence turns out to be
the dream of Kenji, our Japanese slacker protagonist played
by Asian heartthrob Takeshi Kanishiro ("Chungking Express,"
"Fallen Angel"). Troubled by this enigmatic dream, Kenji
calls his Italian cinephile friend Fabricio (Michael Imperioli)
to a café to chat about it. |
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Takeshi
Kanishiro plays Kenji (Left) ignoring an obnoxious
café dweller
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Waiting for Fabricio at the café, Kenji sees the Arab
man in his dream running outside and chases after him.
Stopping the Arab man, Kenji meets Death who thanks him
and disappears with the man. Back in the café, he meets
Pola (Geno Lechner), a German woman, bound to leave for
Paris at noon the next day. Nevertheless, Kenji makes
a date with Pola for dinner. As he goes home and takes
a nap, Death comes to visit Kenji and tells him that he
only has twelve hours to live. For helping her catching
the Arab boy, she¹s offering him a special gift: the knowledge
of his death and the next twelve-hour period where he
can do whatever he has always wanted to do. |
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Kenji
on a date with Pola, mysterious German beauty
played by Geno Lechner
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The movie goes on to wander with Kenji who almost has
an affair with the German woman. He also encounters Anouk
(Hye Soo Kim), a young Korean woman, whom he has a passionate
moment of kissing in an art gallery. Unfortunately, Anouk
turns out to be involved with an older white man, artist
John Sage, who invites Kenji to his dinner party where
Kenji expresses his contempt for John's selfishness in
getting involved with a young girl and tries to have sex
with Anouk. |
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| "I wanted to explore what the meaning of
life is, and what would be the most important thing to
a person who knew he only had twelve hours to live," says
writer/director Wonsuk Chin as quoted in the press kit.
Chin has certainly aimed high with his first feature.
To explicitly state his goal to explore the meaning of
life is also naively ambitious. |
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| Despite some haphazardly inspired moments,
"Too Tired to Die" falls short of its ambitions. As much
as there's so much going on in the movie, so much of it
also seems idiosyncratic, incongruent or insignificant.
Almost everyone speaks with some sort of a foreign accent
in forced quirky dialogue. Although (as a person of color)
I appreciate Chin's fine intention to portray a multicultural
New York, the characters just don't quite gel together
and their funky accents are distracting and make their
acting weak. |
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Mira
Sorvino on the poster of the U.S. release of "Too
Tired to Die"
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Ironically, Mira Sorvino is the highlight of the film.
The sporadic scenes in which she plays Death to claim
different people are often much more fun, campy and humorous
in comparison to the rest of the film where Kanishiro
wanders around New York City speaking bad English to a
hodgepodge of multicultural eccentrics. |
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Takeshi
Kanishiro
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Contrary to Sorvino's spirited performance, Takeshi Kanishiro
was poorly used in the film. It seems obvious that English
is his second language, and his acting suffers because
of it. While Kanishiro is still visually pleasant to look
at, his awkward characterization and bad acting make his
first English language film debut forgettable, to be forgiving
to the least. |
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When the credits roll, you sort of wonder why anyone
would want to watch the last 12 hours of some slacker
who has no goals, no conflict and has nothing to do to
begin with. There are virtually no dramatic stakes involved,
and there's nothing too interesting about the main character.
Nevertheless, as a first film, "Too Tired to Die" shows
that Mr.Chin has some inspiration, some style and some
ideas, even though they were executed with bumpy cohesion
and logic. But I'd certainly hope for more in his next
film. .jpg)
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Now
in theatrical release
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| Director
Wonsuk Chin |
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"The only thing I know is that life is
precious, and we should appreciate every moment rather than
worrying about when we are going to die."
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-Wonsuk Chin
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| Born in South Korea, Wonsuk Chin arrived in the
States in August of 1989 and went to study film at the School
of Visual Arts in New York City. Chin knew very little about
film history, so he watched approximately 500 films in one year—at
Film Forum, Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, etc.
He also volunteered at the Independent Feature Film Market to
try to learn the business side of filmmaking. He graduated in
1992 and four years later applied for his greencard, which he
received just seven days before being deported to serve his
compulsory service in the Korean Army. Chin went on to work
at various jobs while writing the script for "Too Tired
to Die." |
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Check
out Wonsuk Chin's website:
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| It's an endearing, personal and earnest website
on himself and his films. You can read in details
about the making of "Too Tired to Die" which Chin
calls "truth.": |
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Distributor's
Website:
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