Cinespot : From Singapore with Love

From Singapore with Love

If you're in this movie, you'd wanna die too!

Disclaimer:
Dear Cinespot readers, please note that this long meandering piece will reveal major plot points in Coast Guard. So if you are allergic to spoilers, bleeped expletives or literary swill from grammar-unchecked ramblers (erm, me), kindly stop reading now. Know too that the Sinnerman will not be held liable for any deflation in your cinematic pleasures. You have been warned. So here goes.....

Coast Guard is a stupid movie about stupid people doing stupid things. Thereafter, some of these stupid people went crazy, while others got stupider. The fortunate ones though, died. Trust me, I'd rather die too if I find myself stuck in this movie's unfathomably illogical universe. In the screening I attended, there was an exodus of walkouts for this silly movie. Honest to god, I would have done so too. But I willed myself to stay on, for I so wanna conscionably tear it to shreds. And in order to do so, I need to see for myself how much worse this flick could degenerate into. Well, it did not disappoint me. Shred it now, I shall.

An over-zealous soldier, stationed with the South Korean coast guards, seemed constantly psyched for gung ho action. He seemed to be permanently wearing a glazed-dazed-crazed gaze. He seemed openly baying for spilled blood and disemboweled guts. This retard thus couldn't wait to shoot on sight any trespassing (suspected) N. Korean spies attempting to enter S. Korea on his watch. His battle field - a stretch of state demarcated restricted zone along the Peninsula shores. Turns out, if a S. Korean coast guard shoots and kills any trespassers in the said restricted area, they will be cited for commendation and given weeklong leaves as "rewards". Oh yeah, his wish will be fulfilled soon.

One night, an amorous drunken couple (who coincidentallly had a run-in with that militarily fetishistic retard earlier in the day), decided to barge into the restricted zone for some kinky bump and grind. (By the way, it's the stupid girl who egged her boyfriend on for this impulsively suicidal act.) In those "right place, right time" types of movie contrivances, the retard happened to be on duty. Whereupon sighting suspicious head bobbing movements, the soldier, without a second thought, shot (and blew up) the literally mid-coitus bugger. His drunken girlfriend could do nothing but screamed when she realised her boyfriend was strewn along the shores like an overturned bowl of tomato pasta. So understandably, she retreated into a post-traumatic state of shock (full impact of this trauma would only be felt later in the flick, so be patient my young lads...)

In the aftermath of this blood bath, the village to which the couple belonged went up in arms in a unanimous chorus of vengeful uproar. So what did the military do? They decorated the retarded soldier for his upstanding, vigilant efforts. Oh ya, he got his week long break alright. But racked with a sudden rush of guilt, the retard did not enjoy the "rewards" as much as he thought he would. Sliding down the slippery slopes of despair, he thus started behaving erratically and dangerously. So much so was his destructive behaviour, the retard got himself involuntarily discharged from military service shortly after.

But as cinematic idiocy goes, this dogged nincompoop stubbornly refused to believe the reality of his dismissal (and by extension, his murderous execution of the amorous boy and his bitch). In those stereotypically desperate cling-ons to pathetic denial, the bugger thus started loitering and lingering around the camp. He would repeatedly suit up in his army fatigues and act like nothing really happened. He'd bark orders at grunts that he's longer authorised to command. Worst, he would soon threaten to be a Rambo incarnate and aspired to rid the world of sane and sensible human beings. Miraculously, no one within the military ranks bothered to charge the guy or call the police. They did nothing and let the nut case continued with his shenanigans...until it was too late.

Inevitably, the messy nature of the retard's involvement in this story intensified and degenerated when he careened off the edge of sanity. He started stealing weapons and shot soldiers (his previous comrades) dead on sight. The soldiers head count hence started diminishing one by one as the retard upped his skills during those suspenseful target practices. OH. MY. FRIGGIN' GOD!!!!!

And do you still remember that traumatised girl? That equally reckless and guilty party in this senseless flick? Like I mentioned earlier, she immediately went berserk after witnessing her hump buddy being literally grounded into mince. Due in part to that most unfortunate event, she started sashaying along village fields, dirt roads and seashores like most crazy women do. Suddenly, she enjoyed biting into live fishes; wearing those scary clownish smiles and seduced any willing soldiers into raping her silly. She got pregnant, naturally. So her equally stupid brother confronted the soldiers to pick out the usual suspects (not knowing that most of those uniformed bastards had already bedded her by then). And guess what, he agreed stupidly to let his psycho sister be cut open in an amateur abortion procedure performed by under-qualified army medics (who also had hands and "in-between legs" in ravaging this hopelessly crazy woman).

Questionable animal rights issues aside (those poor fishes), Coast Guard's simmering homoeroticism also seemed coincidently juxtaposed with its misogynistic abuse of this one prominent female character. Most laughably, it painted the Korean military establishment with equal parts vengeful fundamentalism and ludicrously juvenile propaganda bull s***.

Time out! Before I unintentionally elevate this horrid picture into a "socio-political" satire, allow me to declare now that I'm not. For where socio-political propaganda goes, I feel another sick Korean flick, A Petal worked immeasurably better when compared to this cinematic turd spiral. A Petal (Jang Sun-Woo) managed to shock and rock us, whether we liked it or not. Its "hard-to-watch" moments served their impactful purposes in the grander schemes of its socio-political agenda.

But in Coast Guard's case, it's but a bulldozing schizo trainwreck; it incrementally piled up as the film progressed. On the one flailing hand, it failed to push its shock value to do a straight exploitation flick justice. On its other strewn about limb, it self-destructed its intent to preach its politics (if any) by raping my intelligence threshold. It just had one too many OTT showcases of unreasonable stupidity. (Do re-read the above paragraphs for illustration, please). Anyhow, this flick transmitted so many half-baked, plain indecipherable signals that I was numbed from bothering to decode its underlying message.

In closing, Coast Guard is a jumbled swirl of melodramatic excesses and brain cell-frying torment. It literally strained for critical asylum (for which I'm sure there's many gracious hosts out there). I just cannot understand why such films are made sometimes. Films that obliterate our hopes for cinema and instead worship the irredeemable stupidity of its premise (and worse, expecting us to forgive its trespasses too). Yikes!

Written by Sinnerman