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Ju (Kim Hyun-sung) is not yet 20 and his life already seems over: He
works at a dead end job as food delivery boy and has no motivation (and
perhaps no talent) to better himself, he lacks any charm whatsoever, girls
tend to ignore him, and his best friend Lee (Kim Jin-pyo) only drags him
along on dates to look better himself. Lee has one advantage over Ju
though: He's a pro-gamer, playing at tournaments, and winning, too. Ju
would love to be a pro-gamer too, someday, but he seems to lack talent and
determination. Then one day he stumbles upon a game called The Little
Match Girl, a game based on the Hans Christian Andersen-tale in which
the contestants must see to it that the little match girl (Lim
Eung-kyeong) sells no lighters (instead of matches) and in the end freezes
to death - but here's the catch, while in the story she dies happy
thinking of her grandma, here she has to die happy thinking of the
contestant. The other difference is that the game takes place in the real
world (as in 21st century Seoul), and whoever plays the game has lots of
competition from other players - most of which carry firearms and aren't
afraid to use them, and know some kind of martial arts, too. At first,
Ju feels grossly outmatched and outgunned, and can't but watch in a
mixture of awe and terror, but then he saves the life of a moody and
manhating Lara Croft-wannabe, Lala (Jin Sing), and has suddenly
found a foothold in the story. Eventually, he loses Lala though, or rather
abandons her at a critical plotpoint, but instead actually gets hold of
the match girl, who somehow has just walked away from a big battle over
her. They spend the night together (as in sleeping next to each other),
and the next day the match girl is gone, and with her Ju's weapons, which
she uses now to shoot dead all of those who have wronged her. If that
wasn't bad enough, Ju all of a sudden finds himself on the run from the System
(= the company running the game), because he has been identified as a
virus within the game and needs to be eliminated. He receives help though
from an old fisherman who is also a wiseman concerning the game, a soup
vendor doubling as arms dealer, and a resurrected and pretty cranky Lala.
And somehow, Ju makes it into the System headquarters thanks to the
telepathic guidance of the match girl (who has since been taken captive by
the System), a makarel that doubles as a superweapon disguised as a
toygun, and his own skills that have increased significantly since the
beginning of the game. Inside the System-compound, Yu has a series of
increasingly bizarre encounters with System-henchmen (including his own
friend and progamer Lee), and also has to cope with ever changing
landscapes, but finally he makes it to the match girl - to be gunned to
death by System henchmen. Ending #1: Game over, Ju returns to his own
pitiful life. Ending #2: Ju finds a lighter he has kept from the match
girl, a lighter that keeps him in the game, and together, he and the
little match girl manage to fight off the System hordes and escape to a
place int he sun, where they live happily ever after. Sure, it might not
be the real life, but it's a good life ... Resurrection of
the Little Match Girl is quite simply an insane film - and hilariously
so: It's a wild parody of science fiction and cyberpunk films such as Matrix,
Tron, The Fifth Element, Heroic
Trio and eXistenZ as well as of Hong Kong action cinema as
such, and what makes this film work (besides an endless sequence of
explosive action scenes) is that it keeps a totally straight face
throughout, while at the same time being 100% aware of its ridiculous
story - Lim Eung-kyeong's ridiculously emotionless match girl is probably
he best example for this. This way though, the nonsensical plot the film is based on suddenly
makes perfect sense ... well, in a surreal sort of way. That all said, Resurrection
of the Little Match Girl does actually fall a few inches short of
being a masterpiece: basically the whole setup for the film takes up quite
a bit too much screentime, and until the match girl arms herself around
halfway through the film, it seems to consist of little more than loosely
connected action sequences carried by a skeletal plot. On top of that, the
action scenes are mostly lacking in inventiveness and pacing. That all
said, Resurrection of the Little Match Girl is stil a pretty good
film (and a perfect party flick) - it's just, it could have been great ...
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find The Ressurection of the Little Match Girl at adultvideouniverse.com
