Kim Jee-woon Quotes

My background is in acting, so I enjoy being able to show what I’m looking for. With acting, it’s very immediate when you show someone what you’re looking for, and the feedback is instantaneous as well.

Obviously, I’ve made several films in Korea, so I’m very well accustomed and acclimated to Korean filmmaking.

Lionsgate and Lorenzo di Bonaventura saw my Korean Western-style film, ‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird,’ and probably felt that I would be right for ‘The Last Stand,’ which could be classified as a modern Western.

Of course, ‘The Last Stand’ has a villain who is traveling to the border to fulfill his own desires, but it’s more about the main character. The Sheriff putting a stop to this villain and defending his town. ‘The Last Stand’ is more about protecting something. About protecting a value.

What can possibly be the common factor in a Kim Jee-woon film? I think what really ties a lot of my projects together is that there is always a character that believes his life is not exactly the way he wishes it to be.

America is a country that, even with all its flaws, has been able to flourish because there is a certain ideology about fighting for what you believe in. What you choose to believe in – no matter how small or big it is – is what you believe in, and that ideology has made America.

One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one’s own ideas.

Korean films have always been distributed to international audiences as arthouse films.

What can possibly be the common factor in a Kim Jee-woon film? I think what really ties a lot of my projects together is that there is always a character that believes his life is not exactly the way he wishes it to be. My regard for that character turns out to be a very sympathetic one.

I want to work with a wide range of genres because it gives each film a different cinematic energy.

In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.

We all desire things that we believe we cannot have, and so my films reflect that again and again. The mystery must be solved, the goal attained.

‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird’ is about individuals fulfilling their desires and just going the distance to fulfill that desire.

I’ve made the film ‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird,’ which was an Eastern Western film. Obviously, the Western film is American and American only; there’s really no Western genre over in Asia.

The Western is as American as a film can get – there’s the discovery of a frontier, the element of a showdown, revenge, and determining the best gunman. There’s a certain masculinity to the Western that really appealed to me, and I’ve always wanted to do a Western in Hollywood.

Overseas directors who want to work in Hollywood, the language barrier is not a problem. With the right talent, any director can be successful.

I’m someone who has a singular goal in making films: I want to tell a story. There are certain stories that I want to tell.

Hollywood’s never really been the ultimate goal for me.

I never make films thinking ‘This is my film. This right here is undoubtedly Kim Jee-Woon style.’ I am not even sure what ‘Kim Jee-Woon style’ is. When I make films, I never allow myself to make hard-set decisions ahead of time.

I work from opposites to opposites, in a way. It’s finding one thing and then doing the other from film to film. So maybe after ‘I Saw the Devil,’ I might do something like ‘I Saw the Angel‘ or perhaps something warm and happy.

A lot of people are very interested that a Korean director has made a western. But when I look at the reactions of the audience, I realise the points at which people laugh are the same for a Korean audience and an international audience.

In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree.

I want to do science fiction with dark stories.

I’ve been thinking of doing a sci-fi thriller or a sci-fi noir, if that’s possible.

Whatever it is that I thirst for in my current project tends to turn up in my following project.