Sisily 2km

Story: Seok-tae (Kwon Oh-jung) took the diamonds of his gangster buddy Yang Yi (Lim Chang Jung) and disappeared. After a little accident Seok-tae is forced to spent the night at the home of a residential community of 6 strange people. When Seok-tae hits his head and becomes unconscious the "familiy" discovers one of the diamonds. They decide to sell the diamond and kill Seok-tae. However, killing him turns out to be not that easy. It even gets more complicated when suddenly Yang Yi with his 3 gangster subordinates arrives at the "family's" home. Apart from the secret of Seok-tae's whereabouts the family also remains quiet about other things. Something just doesn't seem to be right and moreover Yang Yi hasn't much time left to find his boss' diamonds. As the family discovers that Seok-tae has even more diamonds, a fierce battle between the gangsters and the family starts to take place. Furthermore, there is an abandoned school which is said to be haunted by the ghost of a girl, that every now and then interferes...

Review: To get things straight right at the beginning: "Sisily 2km" is no horror comedy, but a genuine gangster comedy, in which for whatever reason a ghost found its way in. If you watch the movie expecting nothing else than that, then you will be far less disappointed than I was. The movie is not bad at all, but if you are hoping to see the Asian horror genre being made fun of with all of its clichés (of which there are more than enough) then you won't get your money's worth. Aside from the girl with long black hair, there are no cross-references to other movies.

First, we get to know gangster Seok-tae who makes away after taking the diamonds of his friend and who is stuck at the home of a nice little family in the suburb Sisily when he has a car accident. The "family" however doesn't seem to be related to one another, but merely share the same house - some kind of living community. So that are the movie's protagonists and now the only thing missing is the ghost. Far from it. Because something isn't right about this family. And we first have to get to the bottom of things.
At first the movie oftentimes reminds us of "The Quite Family". A cruel secret seems to be hidden deep inside the family members' mind and the viewer is always asking himself what it's all about. When they find a diamond at the unconscious body of Seok-tae they at once decide to wall him alive at their home (oh, a horror movie motive that found its way in!) and now we soon begin to understand what's not right with this family: It doesn't seem to be the first time for them to kill someone...

There they go, our "heroes", we so absolutely can't sympathize with. Yet, at the same time Yang Yi and his buddys are brought into play. When Yang starts to hit the family with a shovel and wants to burry them alive, then we can't be on his side, either. The interesting thing about the movie is that the true characters and motives of the protagonists only slowly start to evolve. There is a slow shifting of the audience's favor from the family to the gangsters. This works pretty well and is somewhat different of what we are used to see.

As it is expected of a gangster comedy there shouldn't be missing a bunch of incapable and sappy gangsters. At a first glance they in fact seem to be missing, because in the introduction they all behave very professionell and cool. However, very soon there are more than enough moments when we don't hold something against Yang Yi anymore when he every now and then beats up his gang. It's not only the incapability of the guys, like the "monk"'s (un)awareness of what a ghost is supposed to do in this world, which always adds to the fun factor of the movie, but it's the characters in general. While the "family" is probably intentionally one-dimensional and mysterious, the gangsters seem to be a little bit caricatural.

Lim Chang Jung is doing a great job as Yang Yi. He plays his character very well with lots of facets which little by little shine through his simple gangster being. After his role in "Sex is Zero" one wouldn't have expected this from him. His portrayal is a real highlight of the movie. The scene in which he sits together with the ghost and he is telling the dead girl, how beautiful she looks, while she is taking care of his injuries is clearly the movie's best moment.

Unfortunately, "Sisily 2km" has also its sore points. While the plot is rather thin in the beginning, it starts to build up a little more giving some nice twists and answers. However, towards the end the movie becomes a little bit dull. The resolution is a little bit disappointing, too. More than once one has the feeling that some ideas weren't thought-out to the very end. Especially, out of the ghost story one could have made a lot more. Actually, the ghost story would be completely out of place if Shin Yi wouldn't give her character that special kind of charisma.

What's left is an unambitious gangster comedy with some supernatural elements added, some nice characters and a great main actor. If you are not against slapstick and a good portion of black humor, you will be entertained.

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