A.f.r.i.k.a (2002)

If you have watched the Korean action/comedy 'Attack the Gas Station' (1999), you will be laughing at one of the spoof scenes in A.F.R.I.K.A.In the movie A.F.R.I.K.A, the four girls went to rob a gas station. Turns out that the gas station owner is the guy from 'Attack the Gas Station'. The owner is frustrated that he is always getting robbed and he is always forced to sing aloud. In the 1999 movie, he was robbed by four guys (one of the male robbers, Yu Ji-Tae, went on to be the coolest bad guy in Oldboy).An average popcorn flick with four pretty girls. I do have to comment that Lee Yu-won (Yo-won) looked gorgeous after styling her hair in the middle of the movie.Mao points: 5/10

When you empower four Korean women with firearms and unleash them into a male dominated society, chauvinists beware. Laden with amusing gags and lots of pretty people, this film is a fun romp that amounts to finishing a bag of Doritos in one sitting, you feel bad for the mass junk consumption, but damned if you don't still feel inclined to wish you had some more left to consume. I wouldn't judge this against anything from serious Asian action genre, it's more like slapstick meets teen coming of age. Reckless, sloppy, unpredictable and sometimes incidentally hilarious. Cool.

Director Shin is a relatively and unexpectedly long-lasting film maker among highly competitive film market of S. Korea. He has always devoted to off-beat comedy combined with some tone of social message.Downside is that he usually picks some low-level performers, and unscripted scenario. The result is always mediocre and the viewer's reaction is nothing but lukewarm. Afrika is none out of this stereotype. Four girls have their own personal story, and different motivation to grab guns. They settle their feuds, resolve old paybacks toward masculine society.However, what is the real story? Did he intend to launch a simple stupid laugh for highly-calibered sophomoric Korean filmviewers? No thanks, and no more like this!!

I was a little leery when I found out the dvd had been released only four months after the movies theater run, but the movie isnt bad. Its basically your typical womens road comedy, in this case involving 4 korean women who through circumstance come into possession of two guns, become robbers, and are chased by gangsters while becoming friends and working thru personal issues. The humor is light and broad, but viewers might be put off by some violence which is a bit harsh for this type of movie, though for me watching the goofy gangsters smacking each other around was fun (as well as their verbal banter- they pretty much steal the movie from the leads). I recommend horror movie fans check out Kim Min-Sun and Lee Young-Jin (two of the actresses in this movie) in the schoolgirl ghost story Memento Mori.