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Four young thugs are bored one night, so they decide to rob a gas station, just for fun. When they find it has no money, they lock the employees up and stay there for the night, pumping gas. Once they get the hang of the equipment, the money starts to flow, and if customers give them any problems, they just take them hostage.

This comedy by Kim Sang-jin has taken Korea completely by surprise. Before it opened, it generated little interest, with no truly big-name stars and a director whose last movie, Two Cops 3, was considered a disappointment. Once it started playing in theaters, however, word of mouth together with a strong marketing campaign eventually turned this film into the hottest feature of the month.

Attack the Gas Station derives its humor from a combination of slapstick violence and a tangled, shifting system of power relations. Most everyone in the film is nursing an ego, small or large, and the viewer's pleasure lies in watching them all slug it out, in a desperate attempt to avoid looking weak or ridiculous. However, it is when the characters do fail and expose their weaknesses that we begin to feel empathy for them.

The film features two up-and-coming actors in Lee Sung-jae (Art Museum by the Zoo) and Yoo Oh-sung (The Spy). Both actors are convincing as the young lawbreakers who eventually come to represent moral order and decency in the small corner of society that develops at the gas station.

This movie does perhaps have a hint of social criticism, with its digs at Korean high school and the local police force, but at its heart it delights in simple, throwaway humor where overreacting becomes the norm and Chinese takeout becomes a matter of life and death.     (Darcy Paquet)

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