Asura - The City of Madness

I wanna say one thing first, It's the first film that created such a cult boom like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)" among South Korean moviegoers. That is enough value for this film in the South-Korean film industry. I will write down a more detailed review later.

There are 3 types of Korean films: Revenge, Cop, Political. this one starts as the 3rd, turns into the second and gloriously ends on the 1st featuring the whos who of everything. also featuring on of the top cinematographers today, amazing.

Dark gloomy manly muscular film noir

Absolutely corrupted mayor and his slavery police detective together ruining the justice.

This story is sort of the real in Corea. Too many politicians are evil and the rotten police men support them in many ways. They even try to blast the city gas pipeline and policemen never investigate about the fire on the city gas pipeline despite the firemen blamed and ordered to investigate.

This movie is realistic in those ways of Corean lives and so interesting and exciting film noir as well.

The car chasing scenes are some of the best cuts in the years! Even only that car chasing cuts must be able to pay back enough of your time.

Asura is surely the best Corean gangster film in the years!

Annam Korea is the backdrop for this noir-esque masterfully shot crime thriller. Caught in a catch 22 of violence and deception, abuse begets abuse in the dog-eat-dog world of Asura: The City of Madness, where corruption is the day to day of cops and politicians.

Asian cinema is on a whole other level in terms of artful violence.

I love these Japanese ultra violent films. They're great, aren't they, and a lot of blood gets spilt in this involving cop corruption crime. Only it's a lot of what I've seen before, with our lead, a bad cop who's walking a tight rope, gets in over his head, having to deal with Internal Affairs, and a corrupt mayor, where basically we know how his fate will ensue at the end of this two, quarter hour movie. Not only this, his wife is dying too, so we can sees little, the why's of his corrupt actions like beating a witness, lowlife, half to death, after accidentally sending a cop, going off a building when a fence gives way. We could of had better acting too, and script, some subtitles, I couldn't believe I was reading. I wasn't surprised again to see a car chase in this either, though that one in that great action film, The Raid 2, surpasses this, making this seem small fry. The first shot of the film, where the same shots used a couple of times, paints a bleak, barren city, as if it's a slum, even though an attracting shot. The actor, playing the mayor probably gives the only real standout performance. He's one suave son of a bitch. Not without interest, definitely. It just didn't rise to other films, or past what I've just said.