I was starting to get upset at the VICE GUIDE TO TRAVEL and thinking about taking my ball and go home, when I finally got the hang of it. Shane Smith does it better.Every episode featuring co-founder of Vice Magazine Shane Smith as the main traveler features some of the most fucked up and fearless travel documentaries I've ever watched. I will not even comment the other episodes and keep my focus around Smith's last two destinations of the season - Liberia and North Korea
Yep, he went there. It's not a typo or anything. The man has the spirit of an adventurer and a set of brass balls.
First stop, Liberia. Holy shit, no offense to Liberians but this place looks like hell on earth. I'm not sure I would even have stepped out of the plane if I ever went there. The place has fallen into a state of complete anarchy. Local warlords are tearing each other apart, turning children into soldiers and putting women in brothels. I don't want to spoil too much of it, but there is some very graphic footage shown, including footage that was aired on Liberian TV (which is available on YouTube, believe it or not) of their ex-president being tortured and killed in front of a warlord. This is really intense stuff. Shane Smith actually meets up with three of them. General Bin Laden (which he bails of out prison), General Rambo and General Butt Naked (by far the most fearsome of all three). Funny names isn't it? They are nicknames that are used to strike fear in the heart of the enemy. The United Nations were in Liberia at the time of the documentary (I don't know if they still are), but General Rambo said that whenever they leave, taking back Monrovia (the capital, named after U.S President James Monroe) would take about two hours. If war is an industry here, over there it's everyday life.
Then, where else to go but North Korea, right? The perfect place to kick back and put Liberia in perspective? One of the big questions I'm sure is burning everybody's lips here is how the hell did he got INTO North Korea at the first place? Let's just say Shane didn't go through South Korea. It's about impossible to pass through. He had to think outside the box and enter by the opposite geographical direction. Everything is so weird over there. The world is engineered 1)Please Kim Jong-Il or 2) Keep North Koreans in fear. I'll give you an example. They were put in a forty-seven stories high hotel over there, in the middle of Pyongyang. A beautiful piece of architecture that reflects the glory of Kim Jong-Il, right? There were six tourists. In a forty-seven stories high hotel! Shane dined alone in some sort of banquet room, eating something he could not quite define, while food was scattered all over the tables for display....then put back on trays for the next day. Trippy huh? It's not the most trippy vision North Korea had to offer them, believe me.
The VICE GUIDE TO TRAVEL episodes narrated by Shane Smith are a glorious achievement in extreme tourism and documentary filmmaking. It will blow your fucking mind. Many times during the viewing I went like: "NO WAY". You can watch them on Netflix or a bit everywhere on the internet, chopped in little three to five minutes topos. Fascinating, but back to regular documentary reviews next Friday.
Then, where else to go but North Korea, right? The perfect place to kick back and put Liberia in perspective? One of the big questions I'm sure is burning everybody's lips here is how the hell did he got INTO North Korea at the first place? Let's just say Shane didn't go through South Korea. It's about impossible to pass through. He had to think outside the box and enter by the opposite geographical direction. Everything is so weird over there. The world is engineered 1)Please Kim Jong-Il or 2) Keep North Koreans in fear. I'll give you an example. They were put in a forty-seven stories high hotel over there, in the middle of Pyongyang. A beautiful piece of architecture that reflects the glory of Kim Jong-Il, right? There were six tourists. In a forty-seven stories high hotel! Shane dined alone in some sort of banquet room, eating something he could not quite define, while food was scattered all over the tables for display....then put back on trays for the next day. Trippy huh? It's not the most trippy vision North Korea had to offer them, believe me.
The VICE GUIDE TO TRAVEL episodes narrated by Shane Smith are a glorious achievement in extreme tourism and documentary filmmaking. It will blow your fucking mind. Many times during the viewing I went like: "NO WAY". You can watch them on Netflix or a bit everywhere on the internet, chopped in little three to five minutes topos. Fascinating, but back to regular documentary reviews next Friday.