Tazza: The High Rollers

Movies about gambling are very rare in Korea,and none have been a smash hit. I myself didn't expect to be impressed with the film Tajja,which is based on the hit comic with the same name. Coming out of the theater, I thought it was the best movie I have ever seen. The story revolves around KimGonni(Cho Seung Woo),who loses all his money to a tajja while playing the traditional Korean gambling game 'Hwatoo'. For a while he just visits illegal gambling centers,hoping to catch the tajja who took all his money. Coincidentally he happens to cross the most skilled tajja in the country,PyoungGyoungJang(Baek Yoon Sik).Becoming Pyoung's apprentice,Gonni learns the skills and tricks,becoming a master tajja himself and earning loads of money.While he promised PyoungGyoungJang that he will retire once he earned five times the money he lost,he just can't seem to stop playing hwatoo.But the world of gambling is not pleasant as it looks........ I don't want to be critical,but all the comic based Korean movies that I have seen sucked, including the horror film 'Apartment'and 'Dasaeposonyu'. 'Tajja'was different. It carried on the story so swiftly and interesting that the running time of about 140minutes just passed swiftly like the wind. I was especially impressed with Yoo Hae Jin,who plays Gonni's friend tajja Ko Gwang Ryol, and, like all the people who've seen this movie,Kim Hae Soo, who plays Madame Jung,a woman who organizes planned gambling games with tajjas. I hope there will be a sequel,because 'Tajja'totally changed my view of Korean movies.

A scrambled time-line leads to an initial sense of an impressionistic, messy plot that the viewer will have to try to put back together at the end. An overarching story does develop eventually even though the particulars pile up like a plate of noodles.

Go Ni is a young man who gets involved in gambling, first as a perpetual loser, then as an apprentice to a master gambler, and finally as an accomplished high roller that is heavily compromised with its violent milieu. The game is no-limit hwatu, a sort of Korean poker, played with thumb sized cards, any of which easily hidden in the palm of your hand. And there lies the rub, for the small size of the cards allows conjuring professional gamblers to win consistently over innocent suckers.

As Go Ni rises through the ranks, he eventually reaches the rarefied heights of the high rollers, where more money is bet than you can shake a stick at. It is also an environment of strongmen and women with its own violent rules.

There is a fair amount of hwatu gambling and it would help to know some about the game, in particular the ability to recognize card faces. It would help but it is not strictly necessary.

This is the kind of film whose central premise is that violence is entertaining. The more perverse the better. There is plenty of it, though the gore is contained. It is not the aseptic, blazing-guns style of violence so dear to the American psyche, but the intimate violence of the sharp blade more to the liking of orientals. The high rollers culture of illegal gambling filled with trickery and treachery but also with a retributive code of honor is a perfect breeding ground for that kind of violence. Mounds of money on the table are insufficient to pump adrenaline into the veins of underworld figures with plenty of blood in their hands. Limbs -- in the form of fingers, ears and hands -- are bet. It's no longer a question of winning but one of not losing, of humiliating and debasing your opponent psychologically but, more perversely, physically.

If gambling and blood fests are your cup of tea, then you should be satiated, otherwise you have been warned. If you do see this, pay attention to the four rules of the master. They can be useful for life in general. Paraphrasing rule four: "Your friends are not forever, neither are your enemies."

The War of Flowers, arguably one of the best Korean motion pictures based on cartoons, is a film about gamblers. The film boldly anatomises and exposes the underworld of gamblers which seems to epitomise our greedy capitalist society. And it is well-timed, given a corruption scandal involving pachinko parlours that has given a big blow to Korea's already beleaguered ruling party.

As a movie partly comic and partly brutal which deals with working class characters living on the dark side, it outdoes Guy Ritchie's 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'. The actors, main and supporting alike, are superb. In particular, Stunning Kim Hye Soo exquisitely plays a Dashiell Hammettish femme fatale who "contrives and organises" fraud gamble matches as well as lures easy preys.

Director-cum-scripter Choi Dong Hun weaves together all these characters and their stories in a seemingly effortless manner, showing his brilliance.

Hong Kong gambling flicks go in and out of fashion, but the genre is relatively new in South Korean cinema, and TAJJA can be extraordinarily entertaining.

TAJJA has style to burn, and from the very start, there's flashbacks, split-screens, hyperbolic action, and the expected doses of melodrama in the story of a young gambler's rise to fame. Most intriguing of all is the Korean card game that frames the action - a game that attracts die-hard gamblers and a small group of cheats who live off the system. As such, this often feels like THE STING, but with a more brutal core. The narrative is set out in a series of "lessons" any prospective gambler must learn; with each lesson, the risks become increasingly challenging.

The narrative almost manages to support a love story, though there's no room in a gambler's heart for true love. The energy of the narrative is matched by the plot's daunting complexity, but the film journeys into surprising areas. It's safe to say that TAJJA will inspire many more gambling features, though it would be hard to surpass the originality and style of this film.