Let's be realistic.

Brilliant and touching

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Seldom have I watched a movie that fails so completely in all that it attempts to do. There could be a good reason for this, however; the director and two leads were abducted from South Korea by Kim and then forced to partake in this schlock whilst the Dear Executive Producer Kim Jong Il ran the show. This was ten years before he became the ruler of North Korea. I guess he runs his country on the same principles as he ran the production of this movie. (Un)fortunately the kidnapping victims escaped before the movie could be completed, which could explain much of the disjointed nature in the latter part of the film. Quite bizarrely, the director's 'punishment' was to have his name removed from the credits, until he SUED the film company to have it re-instated, although heaven only knows why.The movie opens in a nameless village somewhere in Chosun Dynasty era Korea. A peasant girl is fetching water from a well. She is a kind and selfless young woman, as indicated by her desire to see the old people fed first at dinner time. Her father is the town blacksmith and makes many tools for the farmers. All is not well in the idyllic village, however. An evil king sits on the throne and a great rebellion/war is brewing. He has his army appropriate all the metal in the kingdom in order to forge weapons. It emerges that the leader of the bandits/rebels lives in this particular village and has hidden a weapons cache near the blacksmith's forge. The first of many 'epic' battle scenes unfurls as Korean People's Army soldiers forced to act as extras fight it out dressed as wicked royal guards slavishly obeying the king and virtuous peasants defending their right to bear pots and pans. Yawn.The rebels are routed and arrested, and the blacksmith is then drafted to make weapons out of the confiscated metal, but allows the village people to take back their items when the army leaves. The army comes back and discovers the iron gone and this leads to his imprisonment and torture. As a form of protest, he decides not to eat and begins to starve. His daughter, Ami, tries to get him to eat rice balls by throwing them to him through the bars of the jail. He is a man of principle, however, and refuses to eat even this food prepared by his loving daughter. Instead, he makes a little figurine of the rice balls and clay and makes a dying wish to some unseen force to give it life and help the peasants. He then dies and the obligatory wailing so prolific in North Korean films starts. Once Ami, her brother, her mother, the village, the bandits, and their dogs have recovered from the loss, wiped their tears away and shouted 'aigoo' for the last time, the little sculpture finds its way to Ami. She pricks herself whilst sewing and some blood splashes onto it, bringing it to life. Pulgasari is born, and from this point on the movie never lets you forget that his name is PULGASARI! Every time PULGASARI gets screen time there is an annoying peasant/bandit/king/vizier/random extra shouting 'It's PULGASARI!', 'Hey, PULGASARI!', 'LOOK OUT IT'S…' or 'HERE COMES …' Only the heinous abomination that is 'The Outlaw of Gor' can rival the number of times the lead character's name is repeated as part of the movie dialog.So moving on, Pulgasari starts out small, he eats the needle Ami was using, then he eats the door hinges, then he eats the scrap metal in the forge. He grows bigger and bigger under Ami's control, since it's her blood that infused him with life. I immediately saw a problem with this monster; the peasants' woe is due mainly to the fact that the king wants all their metal for weapons, but their newfound hero eats the same metal. The rest of the film uses made for TV effects reminiscent of 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers' as Pulgasari stomps his way through Feudal Korea MiniTown, killing the king and liberating the peasants. Stuff happens along the way but the rubber suit is more convincing than the plot and character development. Predictably, the monster continues to eat metal, and becomes a burden to the peasants. Ami sacrifices herself by hiding in the village's bell before Pulgasari eats it. Pulgasari and Ami die. Roll credits on the ninety minutes of my life that cannot be taken back; a horrid mess of a movie that cannot be unseen.Reflecting on the didactic nature of the several North Korean films I have watched IE: Peasants Good/Powers that be Bad, I'd have to say that there you could interpret this as a young Kim Jong Il giving the middle finger to an establishment that had molded him from a young age to take over from his father, despite his wishes of film making glory. In 'The Flower Girl' we see how the peasants are oppressed and need the Korean Liberation Army to free them, it takes food, lives and money (metal) to support in order to drive out the Japanese Imperialists (the evil king taking the peasant's resources) but once in power, the KLA and the Communist Party continue to take all of these things from the peasants, eventually requiring the peasants to die in order to rid themselves of the scourge that they themselves have helped feed. The irony would be delicious, but I think that it's actually just a ham fisted attempt to knock capitalism; yet another aspect of this movie that fails with unintentional, yet hilarious results.

first of all, its unfair to compare this movie with a Hollywood product: this is an eastern "man-in-rubber-suit" monster movie made in north Korea and must be evaluated as such. and in his niche this is one of the very best. for the originality and meanings it deserves to be put on the same level of Honda's Godzilla of 1954. it sports believable effects, real mass scenes (ok they were soldiers drafted to act in a movie but nevertheless it's better than what i've seen in "Gappa") and believe it or not a plot that is less nonsense than the usual Gamera - Rodan - Godzilla - Gappa stuff we got used to. at least all the story is more fantastic than Sci-Fi and this places everything on a completely different perspective. "comedy" episodes are laughable but i suppose that asking to a North-Korean movie to meet the standard humor tastes of a western audience is way too much. the interpretative key of the story revolves around the goods and evils of capitalism ,one may appreciate or not the intentions but go find another Kaiju with more sense than "the Japanese are still scared after the atom bomb, poor souls", and "the Japanese scientists save the world". Pulgasari is finally less nationalistic than the average Japanese movie, and this is outstanding for a product of a dictatorial country, isn't ?

Straight away, I saw the movie being similar in the way the set and the actors were playing. The officials' clothes look the same, and the way of acting is also the same. The monster is created from rice and then is set upon eating the iron of the whole province, whilst destroying the government. Not so bad, there's even a moral to the story, which is that the iron-eating monster, whilst helping the villagers being free, cannot (in the end) be controlled either but this is not a reason to censor the movie. Not worth buying the DVD, but good enough to watch, this makes a light evening screening, and it is better to watch with friends.

My MIND! MY MIND!!!!!! I CAN'T STAND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I'm sure years of therapy will erase the scars left by this movie, but I don't have that much time.Okay lets start with a plot run down and I'll bleed from there...I'll be brief-A blacksmith who won't make weapons to stop a rebellion is pitched into jail and starved to death. As a legacy to his children he leaves a small metal doll which comes alive when one of the blacksmith's daughters gets a drop of blood on it. The monster eats metal and begins to grow.The rebels battle the government with the monster. The monster grows bigger and bigger and even after the rebels win the monster still goes on eating and growing until some way has to be found to destroy the beast....Its a weird twist on the Daimajin films from Japan.The monster is one of the stiffest rubber suits I've ever seen outside of a bondage film and is screamingly funny to look at.You can see how the head piece sits on the body. The actor playing the monster at times looks like a boxer warming up for a fight weaving and rocking in a jerky style that brought giggles to this viewer.(Those of you into bondage may want to see about getting one for yourself since it severely limits movement and is probably torturous to wear) The "blue screen" work is laughable, simply because the film stocks don't match.The destruction scenes are surprisingly good and well done, in many ways better than most Godzilla films. The collapse of the buildings seems to be very realistic.The battle scenes while epic in scale are laughable simply because many of the weapons,say the boulders are, obviously cardboard or plaster. There are thousands of people on screen for some scenes and it looks good but they are often simply running to and fro.The film is supposedly a North Korean fable about the evils of capitalism and what ever else Kim Jong-il deemed it to be about.My question is who did they think this film is for? It looks like a TV series blown up to feature size. The level of the story seems to be that of a second or third grade mentality, especially in its humor but it has real animals being carved up, torture, nasty battlefield death and ideas that no child would grasp or care about. Its a childrens film made for adults.This is one of those its so bad its...something movies. Its a mind warp and complete mess. I like bits of it and other bits leave me with slack jawed disbelief. Frankly I was thinking that if it was suppose to be a tongue in cheek sort of thing then I could consider it a good joke film, but since the film is serious and meant to "mean" something then its a disaster.AND LEST YOU ASK IF I'M CERTAIN ITS SERIOUS---- The South Korean director was kidnapped by the North Koreans to make movies like this for them. Luckily he eventually escaped.Do I think you should see this movie?First how much do you love giant monsters?Second how drunk can you get and still see the screen clearly?I don't think you really need to see this unless you want to laugh your ass off with drunken buddies or if you really need to see every rubber suited giant monster movie ever made.Either way DO NOT WATCH THIS ALONE, you'll need someone to help you pick up your jaw off the floor.(And no its not one of the worst films I've ever seen, just one of the most inept)