From the Vaults: Ahnuld's Director's American Debut

When the Chronicle spoke with South Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon in 2011, he expressed a desire to tackle every genre under the sun. This weekend he debuts a new film, The Last Stand, in American theatres that’s a genre unto itself: the Schwarzenegger picture.

Kim’s CV includes A Tale of Two Sisters, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and I Saw the Devil, movies that have skipped from genre to genre, from spaghetti Western to serial killer shocker. When Marc Savlov spoke with Kim (via interpreter) in 2011 about I Saw the Devil, he spoke enthusiastically about the American films that made an impact on him.

Austin Chronicle: Were you influenced by American genre films in your youth?

Kim Jee-woon: Oh yes, absolutely. But I was most interested in the new American cinema of the Seventies. Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and that whole golden age of American cinema, which was, in its own way, comprised of genre films. In another way, I was also influenced by what I call the "upperclassmen," such as John Cassavetes. In filmmaking today, I'm interested in those filmmakers who can take on the Seventies and Eighties' golden age and refashion it for themselves. People like David Fincher, the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, they're all very interesting to me.

See “The Genre Regenerator,” Friday, March 25, 2011, to read the whole Q&A. For showtimes and Louis Black’s 3 star review for The Last Stand, go here.