The most discouraging kind of film, for me, is the kind that has a lot of potential, but just never makes the best use of it. That is the case with Soo. There are a great number of things I liked about it – the cinematography, the cast, the sound effects, the incredibly raw and powerful violence – but I found the sum total of its parts to be lacking. First of all, it’s over 2 hours long when it doesn’t really need to be. If they had chopped at least a half an hour out of it, it would have made for a much tighter story. Secondly, the plot was a little bit what the fuck? I won’t go into detail for the sake of spoilers, but some of the actions by the character made me wonder if they weren’t a little off in the head or maybe not even human.
And finally, even though the fight scenes in this film are supremely badass, they furthered the concept that maybe this wasn’t a story about humans after all, but about robots; battle robots who have seen a few movies about humans and are doing their best impersonation of what they think they are, but fail. In John Woo style, Soo teaches us that nobody ever runs out of ammo unless it’s integral to the plot, you can get stabbed at least 15 times and still fight back, and body parts, like ears, are surprisingly easy to rip off with your bare hands. If you’re the main character, you can can get repeatedly stabbed, shot at least three times, beaten with baseball bats, crowbars, fists, feet and whatever other bludgeoning tools are at hand, and you can still fight until you get retribution. See? Robots.
Unfortunately, Soo makes the cinema cardinal sin of not being bad or good, but of simply being mediocre. It’s not entirely unwatchable and worth a shot if you like violent revenge films, but it’s not anything I would strongly recommend.
