Review of Burning (2018) by Jordanlayton — 27 Apr 2020

A more apt title for this film would be "Slow Burning". You could say that this film falls into the "genre-switching" category that Parasite did last year. The only caveat to that being, the first of the two genres for this film is just nothing. In total sincerity, I cannot tell you what purpose the slow and puttering first half of this film served that could not have been done in half the time. This might be my American short attention span talking, but it was truly a struggle to get through.

And what was my reward? A slightly more interesting, but still underwhelming, second half. I think the main issue this film has is that it's main character is supposed to be a quiet writer that's more than meets the eye, but this characters dialog and the actors performance just make him come off as having some sort of mental disability. I suppose this was supposed to contrast to the suave, rich 3rd point of the love triangle in this film, played by Steven Yeun, who's sociopathic performance is easily the best thing about this film. Maybe narration would have helped me to better understand the main character. I just don't think enough context was given to explain his personality and actions. If ambiguity was the point, I disagree with the point. It's well shot and an interesting window into Korean culture with a great Steven Yeun performance, but the plot and main character make this difficult to recommend for me, despite it receiving tons of critical praise.