ATTACK THE GAS STATION (1999)
Directed by: Kim Sang-Jin
Starring: Lee Sung-Jae, Yoo Oh-Sung, Kang Sung-Jin and Yu Gee-Tae
"...the film balances gritty tension, harsh humor and a genuine sympathy for the characters involved. Once again - not to be missed"
-Rupert Bottenberg, Montreal Mirror
No one expected anything from Attack the Gas Station when it came out in 1999. The director was considered strictly genre, the cast was young and mostly unacclaimed, and the whole darn thing was set in a gas station in the middle of a city in the middle of the night. But the first audiences loved it, and they brought some friends, and the friends brought some friends, and they brought their friends and before anyone knew what was happening the movie was the black comedy hit of 1999, beating out The Matrix, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and earning raves from foreign journalists as it quietly crept around the world, film festival to film festival.
Socialists love this movie, but don't be scared. This is the Three Stooges on anarcho-nihilism. Four bomb-tossing, cream-pie-hurling, bat-wielding disaffected youths run amuck in the streets and attack a gas station!! Why? Who knows! Kropotkin and Bakunin look like pikers next to this nihilistic gang of four who take a city gas station hostage (twice!) in a bungled robbery. Lord of the Flies-style social engineering quickly breaks out amongst the hostages as punk rockers pump petrol, gangsters are forced to rap, customer service becomes a fighting art, and the gas station becomes the staging ground for an end-times battle between gangsters, punks, and an army of moped-driving delivery boys. A dada poke in the eye to authority, this flick serves as a either a political parable about Korean society, or as a microcosm of Korean social problems, or, alternately, just a hell of a lot of fun.
These hijack boys are a surrealist strike force who have done an end-run around logic and reason, knowing that the enemy of change is logical debate. When someone tries to talk them out of what they're doing or asks their reasons they' womp 'em in the head, force them to play strip drinking games, and make them repair a telephone over and over again.
Shiny and stylish, full of Korean rap and glittering mopeds, 60 mph baseball pitches and gas nozzles wielded like six-shooters, this crowd-pleaser bypasses your superego and explodes directly in your id. A freaky, out-of-control ride, Attack is a molotov cocktail disguised as a movie.
Director Kim Sang-Jin's note:
"My priority was making the film funny rather than focusing on narrative or style. I thought a comedy depicting rebellion against society should be somewhat raw and extreme instead of refined. A gas station in a city is like an island. In this isolated space I tried to show, in a funny way, the attempts of alienated young people to overturn the existing order of the world."