It was with some trepidation that I watched Clementine the other day, because I had heard nothing but a relentless stream of terrible things about it. I was surprised to see that it's a Korean film in every way, given Seagal's background in Japanese martial arts and the fact that he speaks fluent Japanese. But make no mistake, Clementine is not a Seagal movie, it's an action comedy that's heavy on the comedy (and cheap drama, for some reason) and light on the action. The only problem is that the comedy is spotty at best and Seagal's presence on the cover box serves only to make us wonder where he is for the whole movie.
The story is about Kim, a fallen Korean Taekwon-do champion who leaves his country when a bad referee call costs him the championship title. He moves to Los Angeles and becomes a cop and never goes back to Korea, although he must live in Korea tow because he and he speaks nothing but Korean, as do his colleagues and his daughter. Having lost his fighting career, he decides to concentrate on a career in law enforcement and taking care of his daughter. A fight promoter is trying to get him back in the ring but Kim doesn't want to get back into fighting.
Kim's daughter is impossibly cute and takes after her father. When Kim gets called in to talk to the principal because his daughter beat up some kid that was teasing her, Kim scowls at the kid and says, "Well you got what you deserved, didn't you!" Unfortunately, there is a stupid sub-plot involving the girl's mother that serves to do nothing but make a light- hearted, half-witted comedy pretty thoroughly depressing. The little girl who plays Kin's daughter has some great scenes, but it seems like she was just screaming and crying for about the last 30 minutes or so of the film.
Oh and remember that huge black guy in Underworld? The one that did that weird thing where he's trying to make his voice so deep that it just calls attention to his crappy acting? That guy is in this movie, and he's still doing that stupid thing with his voice. Maybe someone forgot to tell him that he's not in a vampire movie anymore. But it's pretty much in tune with the rest of the awful acting in the movie, although Dong-jung Lee, who plays the main character, does have some pretty funny moments, especially in the first half of the film, which is the best part of the movie and I would argue that it's even pretty entertaining and fun.
It's revealing about the rest of the movie that the formidable talent of Seagal himself is completely wasted. He has nothing to do in the entire movie except do what he does worst in all his other movies – show up at the end and make some goofy speech and then wander off screen in slow motion. Yawn. But this is not a Seagal movie, it's a Korean martial arts comedy where he makes a brief appearance at the end, in one of the film's only English scenes. If they had kept up the almost family comedy sitcom story of the first half of the movie it could have been fun, light-hearted fare, but trying to give us this dramatic social situation involving the little girl and her missing mother and the whole thing with Seagal just turned it into a muddled mess.
The story is about Kim, a fallen Korean Taekwon-do champion who leaves his country when a bad referee call costs him the championship title. He moves to Los Angeles and becomes a cop and never goes back to Korea, although he must live in Korea tow because he and he speaks nothing but Korean, as do his colleagues and his daughter. Having lost his fighting career, he decides to concentrate on a career in law enforcement and taking care of his daughter. A fight promoter is trying to get him back in the ring but Kim doesn't want to get back into fighting.
Kim's daughter is impossibly cute and takes after her father. When Kim gets called in to talk to the principal because his daughter beat up some kid that was teasing her, Kim scowls at the kid and says, "Well you got what you deserved, didn't you!" Unfortunately, there is a stupid sub-plot involving the girl's mother that serves to do nothing but make a light- hearted, half-witted comedy pretty thoroughly depressing. The little girl who plays Kin's daughter has some great scenes, but it seems like she was just screaming and crying for about the last 30 minutes or so of the film.
Oh and remember that huge black guy in Underworld? The one that did that weird thing where he's trying to make his voice so deep that it just calls attention to his crappy acting? That guy is in this movie, and he's still doing that stupid thing with his voice. Maybe someone forgot to tell him that he's not in a vampire movie anymore. But it's pretty much in tune with the rest of the awful acting in the movie, although Dong-jung Lee, who plays the main character, does have some pretty funny moments, especially in the first half of the film, which is the best part of the movie and I would argue that it's even pretty entertaining and fun.
It's revealing about the rest of the movie that the formidable talent of Seagal himself is completely wasted. He has nothing to do in the entire movie except do what he does worst in all his other movies – show up at the end and make some goofy speech and then wander off screen in slow motion. Yawn. But this is not a Seagal movie, it's a Korean martial arts comedy where he makes a brief appearance at the end, in one of the film's only English scenes. If they had kept up the almost family comedy sitcom story of the first half of the movie it could have been fun, light-hearted fare, but trying to give us this dramatic social situation involving the little girl and her missing mother and the whole thing with Seagal just turned it into a muddled mess.