Run Time: 1 Hour 56 Minutes

The American public has seen its fair share of fast-paced action films that are plagued by bad acting, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sylvester Stallone to Jean-Claude Van Damme. In some aspects Tube fits under this category. Tube's opening scene follows something that we'd expect from Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or even the stellar cast of the Matrix, as five bad guys go up against hundreds. Of course, none of the five guys get killed and they manage to shoot and blow up more people and things than I have fingers. This extremely unrealistic opening battle is intended to open the story to the big bad guy of the movie, but it doesn't really help much. Unlike Schwarzenegger or Stallone films, this fast-paced unrealistic action doesn't seem to continue throughout the film. After the initial action, the film slows way down. Essentially, what this boils down to is that Tube gets boring fairly quickly.

The story goes pretty easily and isn't very complicated, as well the story doesn't make very much sense until after the movie is over. T (Sang-Min Park), a disgruntled government agent, goes ballistic and takes a subway train hostage. Fortunately for the hostages, an overzealous undercover cop, Jay (Seok-Hoon Kim), who spends way too much time arresting petty pick pockets, finds his way onto the subway train to thwart T's diabolical plan. In regards to this simplistic plot, I opened with a brief comparison to bad, but entertaining action films because even horrible movies can be entertaining with the proper action. Tube seemed to lack both of these elements.

Another major difficulty I had with Tube is the character development. The focus upon the character development is somewhat minor and choppy. The minor and choppy character development makes the storyline very difficult to follow. Furthermore, I had a really tough time feeling for the cast, because we didn't get a chance to know, understand, or care for them. In the end, I didn't care if the good guy or the bad guy won. I just wanted to see something happen. Another issue I had with this feature was due to the actual dialogue. Perhaps due to the localization of this feature, some of the spoken dialogue seems slightly awkward, in both appearance and body. The dubbed English dialogue never really appears to fit the person speaking. Furthermore, some of the spoken phrases and idiosyncrasies of the characters don't seem to fit. This leaves the characters underdeveloped and slightly awkward.

Tube, with a fairly boring story that's difficult to follow and little action, isn't the kind of film that will keep most people's attention. I really wasn't very impressed by the feature and I have no problem suggesting you skip it. While some bad films can be resurrected by fast-paced action, you won't find that here.

The DVD

Video:
The video of Tube is presented in anamorphic 1:85 ratio widescreen color. The picture looks very crisp and clean. There are very little traces of color distortions and a very slight grain.

Sound:
This feature has three different audio tracks. The main audio track is presented in an English dubbed 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround sound track. For the most part, the audio sounds very awkward, as is the case with most dubbed tracks. The spoken words never seem to match the movement of the individual's mouth. The other audio tracks include French 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround sound and Korean 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo. The feature also includes subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Extras:
The extras include a Behind the Scenes Featurette: Making Of Tube, Trailers, and a music video for a Korean song that comes from the feature's soundtrack.

Final Thoughts:
Initially I was pretty excited to check this feature out. After the opening scene, I was expecting to see be blown away by some bad-ass action and at the same time I was extremely lost. I hadn't a clue what to expect, the story didn't really unravel very well at the beginning. Midway, I was bored out of my mind. Perhaps I've spent way too much time deep in American culture, spoiled by big Hollywood productions, but I can't say I enjoyed Tube much at all. The opening scene was entertaining, but it was all downhill after that. If you're looking for a film to sweep you off your feet, you'll do best to look elsewhere.