The title, of course, is a reference to The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly. While that was an Italian movie with American actors shot in
Spain, this is a Korean movie with Korean actors shot in China. Is
this a great country or what?
It's set in (I think) 1930's Manchuria, shortly after the Japanese
invasion.
As in the the original, Good is a bounty hunter, Bad is an amoral
ruthless killer, and the Weird is a small-time thief who is seemingly
thrown into a scheme way over his head. All three are at odds over
a mysterious treasure map, which Bad has been hired to snatch from
a Japanese big shot on a train. Good is on the scene to either
kill Bad, or get the map himself. And Weird just is there to score
some loot from the train passengers, but he winds up with the map.
And the chase is on.
The movie is inventive, funny in spots,
with some truly spectacular scenery,
cinematography and production design.
The plot, however, is
muddled: there are huge holes,
loose ends, inexplicable occurrences.
(Who are those guys? Where did those other guys go? Why are those
guys doing that? Who has the map right now? What happened to those
kids? And so on.)
Also, the ending sucks. (I see rumors of an alternate ending, which they
should have used.)
I usually like the books I read. This one came with good credentials: it
won the 2009 Prometheus
Award for best libertarian novel. It got a rave from
Ron Bailey at Reason. The author, Cory Doctorow, is a famous blogger. And yet, it's awful.
Cardboard heros. Strawman villains. Leaden dialog.
The narrating protagonist, Marcus, is a teenage geek whiz kid with
more than a little Ferris Bueller in him. He lives in a
roughly-present-day San Francisco, loves gaming, computers, and
circumventing surveillance systems.
One day he cuts school, meeting
with his friends for a little alternate-reality gaming downtown.
Unfortunately, his fun is spoiled when terrorists decide to blow
up the Bay Bridge and BART's Transbay Tube, killing thousands.
Even worse, the Department of Homeland Security is on the
scene, sweeping up Marcus and his friends, taking them to an undisclosed
location. (Oh, heck, I'll disclose it: Treasure Island.)
Marcus is held for days under suspicion of being in league with
the terrorists; it's never really explained why. Eventually he's
released, but to a world that has Changed Forever. The DHS has
essentially taken over the city, increased
spying on the citizenry by a thousandfold,
cracking down hard on anyone who raises a peep.
Every seventy pages or so,
those four thousand dead San Franciscans get mentioned. But their
killers aren't the villians here: they
are clearly just an excuse for the power-mad government's crackdown.
Outraged, Marcus
declares war against the new anti-terror tyranny, and over the next few months,
sets himself up as a leader of a half-vast cybernetic resistance.
The book stacks the deck unmercifully; Doctorow makes Ayn Rand look
like a relativist wimp.
The villians (DHS and its enforcers) are
lip-curling bullies and sadists. About all they're missing is mustaches
they can twirl, cackling as they tie Marcus to the BART tracks.
The DHS brutes aren't on their own, of course: they're taking orders
from the top, in the form of Kurt Rooney, "known nationally has the
President's chief strategist". (Gosh, do you think that
could just possibly be a thin disguise for someone else
with the same initials?)
Marcus, and everyone on his side,
is as self-righteous as the villians are eeevil. In this epic struggle
between the Little Guys vs. Vicious Oppressors, I was sorely tempted
to cheer for the VOs, simply because the LGs are
so tediously obnoxious. And it's not just the irritating simplistic
lectures about civil liberties, and how the Left is right about
everything, all the time: Marcus is compelled to core-dump
facts, observations,
opinions, and judgments on any topic whatsoever upon us poor
readers. Sculpture. Kerouac. Burritos. Rosa Luxembourg.
Crypto. Flooring. Abbie Hoffman. And on and on. And on.
Imagine the most annoying know-it-all seventeen-year-old
kid you've ever met, then imagine him rambling on for a few hundred
pages. That's Marcus. He's like a nonstop Buffalo Springfield song
lyric without the subtlety.
Example: nearing a big climactic scene in downtown SF,
Marcus discloses his hatred for the Civic Center, and action stops
for
a page-and-a-half discussion of Jane Jacobs and her critiques of urban
planning. I liked Ms. Jacobs too, but… sheesh, not here.
So, anyway, I didn't like it. But, hey, you might. (And, honestly,
I might have liked it, if I were forty or fifty years younger.
Because I was once an annoying know-it-all seventeen-year-old kid myself.)
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