Kindle. I picked this up after reading Rupert Winchester's review at the Mekong Review. Published by Text. It's a pretty stock piece of cinematic Korean lowlife ultra violence. Our lonely protagonist is an orphan dumped in a garbage bin at a convent who was raised to be an assassin by a lame librarian. He's a cat man. All the fun is in the colour: an eight-sided matchbox, bottomless soju, endless Korean-style drinking, the rise of democracy in South Korea fuelling rather than quelling the demand for assassinations, the Doghouse library master-crafted by a Japanese, finding love but insufficient meaning amongst provincial factory workers. Apparently the author is big in Korea. One bum note stuck in my head: he asks "whoever heard of a Californian bear?" as if that's not a bear right there on the state flag. Sure, it's been extinct for a while.
A shocker of an adaptation of the Martin Amis novel. I apparently read it about thirteen years ago and recollect approximately nothing at all. He gets a cameo at least, and that might be this thing's high point, Unless you're an Amber Heard fan, in which case you can enjoy acres of her flesh, photographed as one advertisement after another. The camera leers. Let's at least agree that she can't act, or at least couldn't in 2015 when this hot mess got filmed. Her paramour-of-the day Johnny Depp turns in a self parody. Billy Bob Thorton is the writer/authorial presence, competing with Theo James to be flawlessly characterless. Jim Sturgess is horrible as a lightweight Ray Winstone. Terrible performances all round, with the exception of Jason Isaacs's reliable ham.
Jeannette Catsoulis woke me up to it. It was another shock to find that Amis co-wrote the screenplay. Apparently he's had a go before with approximately the same lack of success.
