The Big Picture

Hwang Wook’s ensemble action-comedy bubbles with boozy Coen brothers influences.
It’s humorous, deadly, and packed with character.
There’s a roll-with-the-punches vibe you’ll need to appreciate, otherwise the film has the potential to leave you behind.

Hwang Wook’s Mash Ville is a King’s Cup concoction spiked with a little bit of everything. Cultist assassins, poison whiskey, birthday destinies, you name it. Titles like the Coen brothers’Burn After Reading, Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird, or Francis Galluppi’s TheLast Stop in Yuma County all resonate as comparison points. Overlapping misfortunes weave a web of amusing obscurity that spirals into booze-soaked madness with a stumble and skip in its step. Mash Ville might as well be torn from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction era. It’s a psychotic, sweat-dripping western that won Mr. Wook “Best Director” at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival.

Mash Ville (2024) Release Date July 21, 2024 Director Hwang Wook Cast Chun Sin-hwan , Park Jong-hwan , Park Seong-il Runtime 126 Minutes Main Genre Western Writers Hwang Wook Expand

What Is ‘Mash Ville’ About?
Image via Fantasia

On a sultry day, the sun beating down on a cast of kooky characters, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Moonshiners, led by the cigar-chomping ​​Joo Se-Jong, ship tainted products to its retailers that could kill consumers. Jeong Ye-Jin, a special effects artist, accidentally presents her latest production with a “lifelike” actual corpse. A duo of Hanbok-wearing preachers with rifles embark on a homicidal spree in the name of salvation. These are, separately, ridiculous acts of buffoonery and violence — but Mash Ville dares to smash every insane story together. Nitwits, businessmen, and abusive lawmen all find themselves scrambling to restore order to Hwaseong, often after a few bottles of hooch.

Wook’s Western is more contemporary, with suited salesmen instead of bandana-wearing cowboys. “Wild West” attributes highlight lawlessness and saloon behavior with a chipper sense of humor. Mash Ville can be aggressively silly but also macabre and thrilling when gunslinging breaks out. It’s the kind of movie where a woman can guzzle an entire bottle of liquor by herself, then bullseye a headshot with sober precision. A very rowdy Martin or John Michael McDonagh sensibility about Wook’s direction encourages pitch-black humor even as bodies pile up, which he navigates without Mash Ville losing the plot. Characters are bonded in sin and form unlikely alliances over glasses of alcohol, as inebriation helps storylines flow into a singular current.

Don’t get me wrong — Mash Ville is an absurd and sudsy comedy-thriller. Characters are defined by physical attributes like ZZ Top beards or drawn-on soul patches, maybe custom one-eyed glasses. They can be maximalist nutjobs like Oh Jae-Won, the police officer who loves beating the snot out of his jurisdiction locals. There’s a frothy head-high to Mash Ville that might not be everyone’s style since it does require surface-level acceptances of plot pivots. Maybe an executioner’s next target drops dead without any altercation, or Jeong Ye-Jin fools an entire studio full of producers and crew with an honest-to-goodness dead person. Wook and co-writer Lim Dong-min are playing in a sandbox like any kindergartener with a vivid imagination, but the film’s goof-about nature won’t be everyone’s speed. It’s also over two hours, so Wook’s experimentation window includes plenty of room to fail.

‘Mash Ville’ Boasts a Great Ensemble Cast
Image via Fantasia

Wook’s ensemble meshes together like friendly regulars at a cherished dive bar. Personalities are calibrated to be larger than life, which makes their split-offs and side-quests all the more daffy. Distillery dimwits Se-Hyuk and Se-jin unwittingly find themselves accepted into the killers’ pastel-colored congregation for a spell, or Joo Se-Jong wins over Oh Jae-Won with his homemade brew. When you fondly recall movies like Reservoir Dogs or Logan Lucky, it’s all about overblown caricatures stuck working together or falling to pieces, and Mash Ville honors that tradition. It’s less about who lives or dies, and more about anticipating what in the Wild Turkey can happen next.

There’s no secret ingredient to Mash Ville beyond Wook’s talents as a filmmaker. It’s outlandish, stimulating, and hilariously sloshed to a charming degree. Actors fulfill their ridiculous roles in Wook’s crisscross-y story about utter unbelievability, keeping us engaged no matter how exaggerated events become. There’s legitimate artistry behind this tonal homogeny of lousy luck, bloodshed, and karmic justice, which goes down smoother than happy hour well spirits. Mash Ville is a flavor of well-blended cinematic anarchy you can sip and savor, not some cheap cocktail that’s all burn and no taste.

REVIEW Mash Ville (2024) Mash Ville is a whiskey-soaked contemporary western about misfortune and mayhem that you could sip on all night.ProsThe roster of lunatics are a delight to follow.The film mixes thrills and humor with aplomb.Wook is confidently in control of a hard-to-handle story. ConsIt?s a bit long for its premise.The film marches to the beat of its own drum, which might leave you scratching your head.A few gags land softer than the rest.

Mash Ville had its World Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.