Sometime during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea (its a popular setting for Korean films in 2008), a Golden Buddha possessing a list with all of the Korean spies is lost by the Koreans. Secret agent Dachimawa Lee is enlisted to recover the Golden Buddha, to which he encounters set-back after set-back.

His trusted fellow agent Yeon-ja Geum (Hyo-jin Kong) perishes in Japan and he sets off with new partner Mari (Si-hyeon Park) to New Jersey to receive high-tech weapons to use against bandits in Shanghai. While fleeing the bandits’ stronghold in Shanghai, Dachimawa Lee loses partner Mari and then suffers an accident that causes him to lose all of his memory. Then, a strange girl (played by Bo-ra Hwang) nurses him back to health. Without his memory, he’s tortured by old nemesis Border Lynx (Seung-beom Ryoo). But before Border Lynx can put Dachimawa Lee out of commission, he suddenly regains his memory and puts Border Lynx and his gang out of commission.

The now re-invigorated Dachimawaa Lee sets off to Switzerland to recover the Golden Buddha and find the mole within his ranks once and for all.

Make no doubt it, the storyline is nothing more than a facilitator for Seung-wan Ryoo to unleash wave after wave off silly slapstick gags and his own signature brand of action sequences. The jokes, running the gamut from disgusting to hilarious, comes at you 100 mph. Similar to a stand-up comedian warming up, the jokes misses the mark at first, but becomes funnier as the story progresses and you become more accustomed with the movie’s idiosyncrasies. One of the stranger experiences you’ll have in Dachimawa Lee is watching Korean actors play Chinese and Japanese characters, but speaking Korean while using the intonations of those two countries to sound Chinese and Japanese. As an example, when the Chinese characters speak, they talk in Korean, but end every sentence with a rising “llllaaaa…” to sound Chinese. Nit picky viewers will note their intonations did mimic the Cantonese language, but the Chinese characters were based out of Manchuria - a region that speaks Mandarin. Meanwhile something that might pass under the radar of foreign viewers is the naming of Japanese villain as “Damanegi” (played by Su-yeon Kim). “Damanegi” is the Japanese word for “onion,” and consequently, you have this blond haired villain running around named literally “onion”. Also, the Japanese word “damanegi” became part of the Korean lexicon during the Japanese occupation, but its use is now frowned upon in favor of the native Korean word for onion.

The action scenes like most of Seung-wan Ryoo films are top notch. I’ll also say that it’s quite a sight to see Won-hie Lim flying around, karate chopping people unconscious with legs that seem no longer than his arms! Also, like Ryoo’s “City of Violence,” the use of the Seoul Action School extras played a prominent part in making those action scenes look so impressive. The many different settings is also a pleasure to watch and it should be noted that while the characters seemed to criss-cross the globe, all the filming was done in Korea. OK…when the setting was presumably set in the Swiss Alps, you could tell the scene was filmed on a Korean mountain, but the rest all looked real.