AllMovie

Jang Sun-woo's Resurrection of the Little Match Girl isn't nearly the disaster that its well-publicized budget explosion and subsequent dismal box office numbers in Korea might suggest. A big-budget action movie directed by an iconoclastic art film director (from the ugly documentary realism of his Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie to the scandalous erotic kinkiness of his satirical Lies), ROTLMG combines Hans Christian Andersen with Taoism and Matrix-like special effects and mythmaking, all thrown together with a candy-colored videogame interface. Calling the film a mess doesn't do justice to its wild incoherence. From the film's transsexual Lara Croft-inspired superwoman, who gets distracted by the need to disco, to its overt references to its lead actress' ubiquitous ad campaign for a cellular phone service, to its Tao-derived fish superweapon (one cannot resist the temptation to use the phrase, "deus ex mackerel"), the film is an incredibly rich cornucopia of references to Korean and world popular culture--past, present, and future. That said, the film lacks passion. It's difficult to care about its somnambulant characters (Jin Sing, as the aforementioned Lara, being the one wacky exception) and impossible to follow its seemingly intentionally goofy plot. The stuttering cadence of the story, meant to simulate a videogame, never allows the story to build any momentum or achieve any depth. There are some laughs along the way, and a few imaginatively presented action setpieces, but there are enough ideas beneath the surface to make us long for something more expressive than this stimulating spectacle.