So you’re hanging around at a noodle bar with some mates on a Friday night and can’t think of anything good to do? Why not smash-up and rob the local petrol station?

While most people would maybe try going to a movie, a bar or their own homes before resorting to boredom-induced violent crime, the four main characters in Attack the Gas Station have a slightly different sort of logic to the rest of us. You see, these chaps are d-i-s-a-f-f-e-c-t-e-d Korean youths whom the world has failed to understand.

So a month after first robbing the petrol station, No-Mark, Mad Dog, Rockstar and Paint are once again bored and eating noodles on a Friday night. In a decisively imaginative plot twist, they rob the place again, but this time the owner tells them that all the cash has been taken away from the place by his wife. Frustrated by the lack of cash, the four take all of the service station employees hostage in order to wait for the dough to arrive and – wouldn’t you know it – pushy customers start turning up and demanding service.

Once they realise that the customers will give them cash for petrol that’s not theirs, they start to “run” the Gas Station, treating people with contempt (and often violence) and attracting the attention of several local gangs along with the police.

Billed as a comedy, this is one of those “what-if-you-could” movies aimed almost exclusively at misunderstood, jaded young Korean men.

While that might mean that it’s a bit of a stretch for the rest of us, at times it’s definitely an entertaining stretch – as long as you’re prepared to wade through a certain amount of cheese-flavoured back-stories and less-than-logical plot developments – there are some very funny moments. At times though, I’m not sure if I was laughing at the same things that the intended audience would have been.

If you’re up for a bit of violence, calamity and anti-establishmentarianism aimed squarely at a disaffected, late-nineties Korean male-youth market (and who isn’t?), you’ll really enjoy Attack the Gas Station.

Rating:  2.5 out of 5