Dokjeon

NC17

It is supposedly a thriller -gory at times- and an action movie but to me it is more of a black comedy.. a trip with an ?ambiguous art house movie ending all in one coherent package! What an achievement.

A cop desperate to find a vicious drug lord gets help from an underling .. or is it the other way around? Fast paced with elements that seemed to repeat with slower but no less thrilling parts set in beautiful scenery. The photography is stupendous and the music is quite good. Most importantly though, lot of the acting is amazing and quite credible however outlandish the behavior required is.

Reviewers are too hang up on the original movie that inspired this remake - ignore them. Every movie borrows more or less from others but the whole package is quite original.

Police detective Won-ho is tracking a drug cartel. His CI is murdered. The cartel is run by the mysterious and unseen Mr. Lee.

This is an interesting crime thriller from South Korea. It has good style. The story is not that inventive. Seo Young Rak could be made into a comic relief character. It's a movie with the bones of a great crime thriller but it doesn't fill out completely. I like the cult idea but it could be a bigger cult idea. It's good but it's trying to be great.

I have been watching several South Korean crime movies in a row now and I must note that they somehow manage to produce lots of terrific work over there in this crime genre.

This being a remake of the original "Drug War" from 2012, I do think that this very remake from South Korea callded "Believer" is actually significantly better than the original: better acting performances, slicker photography and direction, better suspense.

It simply is a really solid crime story, with lots of conning intrigues and double crossing, which engaged me from the start till the very finish, which had an open ending, which I didnt quite understand, but that didnt leave me behind feeling less impressed.

The story: a cop has been on the hunt for a mysterious crime boss for years on end. No one has ever seen this crime boss in the flesh. An undercover operation lead by this very determined cop must finally capture this elusive crimeboss. Will he succeed or die tyring? That's the cliffhanger...

Lots of suspenseful conning schemes. Lots of exciting fights, shootouts and a few horrific torture scenes. Well acted and directed. Beautiful photography and sound. What's not to like?

This is good Korean crime drama about a police officer whose team infiltrates a drug cartel in order to find the person, or people, that killed his informant. The film has good characters. It is violent and gritty. Like all Korean crime films it has a noir quality . The Direction and action and fight choreography are very good. There are many layers to the characters and story in this one. The film has a whodunnit quality. There are several interesting plot twists in this one. I like it and I recommend it. This film, like all Korean films, is better in Korean with English subtitles instead of dubbed.

When a baleful underling survives an assassination plot, and the police accept his help to crack the drug gang's mysterious Mr Big (or Mr Lee) we know we will not be witnessing anything original.

I always try and catch Korean films in a festival, and I'm glad I caught this one. Borrowing heavily from style over substance hits such as Diva, through Usual Suspects and Infernal Affairs, it keeps a Mission Impossible tempo but in the end goes for a mystery ending. The hyper violence isn't quite up to 11 but is fairly unrelenting.

While definitely a great film, with notable sound and cinematography, it doesn't quite hit the heights of some other Korean action films due to some limited character development and imprecise editing. And the editing has filed away a sometimes visible consistent heart.