Before I even start my attack on this film, i need to make something clear. I am a European man in my mid-twenties. I listen to hip-hop music, and I usually prefer movies to contain violence. AFRIKA is not a film made for me. It is made for Korean girls in their late teens, who like pop music and shopping. I am as far removed from the films target audience as you can get, but as a reviewer, I have to look at AFRIKA on it's own merits, and ask myself how well made the film is on it's own terms. I tried to do this, but it's just not a great film, and anybody who wants to hear good things about it should read some other website, because unfortunately, AFRIKA did nothing but irritate me.

My initial impression of the film was a good one. The DVD menu has Limp Bizkit style music, and a well animated menu showing the four girls dressed in 30's style gangster suits. One of them is holding a machine gun, and the screen is riddled with bullet holes. AFRIKA seems to sell itself as a Tarantino styled movie, oozing cool from its every orifice. It promises cute girls shooting their way through tricky situations, while engaging in snappy dialogue and hilarious comedic set-pieces. The problem is, its just not that kind of film at all.

For a start, montages of people having a good time, giggling, and frolicking set to happy music are a pet hate of mine, and here you get a lot of frolics. They frolic on the beach, they frolic in a field, and they frolic every time the movie starts losing its way. Run out of things to do? Need to bump up the running time? Time for a frolic. It's a vaccuous and lazy way to show the relationships between characters. It is obvious that music videos are a big influence on this film, as the pop and soft rap/rock soundtrack testify.

The laziness expands to the plot. You find yourself constantly yelling criticism at the screen, and pointing out gaping holes in the logic. Every time you think that the girls have reached the end of their adventure, some ridiculous and non-sensical event casually brushes danger aside, leaving much of the tension watered down. They are wanted criminals, for instance, but they casually pop out for a milkshake, or to buy a nice hat, and rarely get spotted. In a supposedly dangerous situation, the girls are more bothered about tarot reading and going to internet cafes, and while this is possibly an attempt at satire, it simply didn't work for me.

The girls in this movie irritated me, and instead of being strong feminist characters, they are vein, trivial, and judging by their moods, menstrual. One of them, So Hyun, is not so bad. That is to say, she s fairly inoffensive. Two of the girls are plain miserable for most of the movie, but one of them, Young Mi, is just plain irritating. She represents the 'less attractive than the others, but oh so kooky' kind of female stock character that seems to get woven into so many movies, and she was on screen for about one minute before I started wishing that she would be the one character that gets shot.

But she doesn't get shot. In fact, nobody does. One character shoots himself in the leg, but its for comic effect. If there is any subtext here, it is that the gun is a phallic symbol, and by wielding the guns, the girls are taking on a patriarchal world on its own terms. So why don't they shoot anybody?

In its favour, AFRIKA has quite high production values, and some thought seems to have gone into weaving the soundtrack into the film - count that cash. The comedy sometimes provides some giggles, mainly from the bumbling gangsters and their frustrations with being out-witted by the girls results in some amusing outbursts of abuse among themselves.

Right up to its dissapointing climax, which seems to have been written to quickly get to the credits as if the writer got bored of the whole thing, AFRIKA failed to engage me on any level. Any film showcasing the talents of four (moderately) attractive girls in their early twenties which I don't enjoy must be bad. I have a female friend who is korean, and maybe she will enjoy it, but I'm willing to bet that she doesn't.