A Dirty Carnival

Let me say one thing. I give it 10 just for the apt realistic ending it is. It is not what I liked one little bit but then I give it to the director for catching us off-guard but this is a South Korean movie and this is EXACTLY what I expect from them - a twist that knocks everyone out. This is good. This is what I look for in a South Korean movie - something different from the usual "Hollywood Crafted Endings" - which I feel most of the time implanted into the movie. I saw the film yesterday night and it was running in my mind every time I woke up in sleep. I never thought that this would have such an impact on me.

About the story - this is a gangster film with lots of great violent fights - I thought initially that those fights reflected the title ...until the ending and then I felt the whole movie was like a gangster carnival.

See the movie - this will hit you...

This South Korean take on a low level gangster with skills is the same old story told in an unbelievably enjoyable fashion. The anti-hero is perfectly ambiguous, at times cold blooded and calculating, at times likable, humble, and human. What's worse, as life's choices come at a price, no matter which good life one chooses, the price is almost too much to bear once ensconced in this dirty employ. The acting was phenomenal, with our lead portraying an impossibly good-hearted, cold-blooded career criminal. The story itself contains all of the requisite elements of a good mob drama. The fights scenes were brutally realistic as opposed to stylistic orchestrations of over-the-top martial arts excellence. The score was wonderfully antagonistic to the realities on the screen. The ending was left open for subtle interpretation, where betrayals and motivations are left for the imagination to fill in. Merci beaucoup.

Evil Eye Reviews

Having a main character that is not the most loveable is one thing. Making him still not despicable and kind of relatable is another thing alltogether. South Korean crime movies and movies in general have been delivering and in 2020 Hollywood took a bow (even if Parasite is not crime and difficult to categorize, it is a superior movie to many others that have been released).

This is more predictable than that, but even so the path we take, the things we experience, even the ones we see coming are quite something. A lot of violence and almost a film school theme to the whole movie too. Know your stuff, know your story, don't just come up with stuff. Makes it all more authentic.

The ending might turn some off, but there's always danger in how to end and how people will feel about that, no matter if you're positive, negative or neutral about it. I would say the only way this could end - and the movie does not overexplain which is really good. This is a treat and I almost regret taking so long - before I finally watched it

Since I have not heard about this film before it was broadcast on the Sundance Channel, I had no expectations. This is a very good to almost excellent film about gangster life in South Korea. It features In-sung Zo in a terrific performance as low level gangster Byong-doo. He meets up with an old friend Min-ho, who is a filmmaker and picks Byong-doo's brains about being a gangster. It spirals from there, as Byong-doo gets more ruthless and violent in his quest for more money and especially power. He also meets up with another old classmate. the pretty Hyun-joo (Bo-yong Lee) and that relationship develops slowly. There is some violence in this, but if you like gangster films I liked this as much as Goodfellas. Really, it is that absorbing and highly recommended.

A tale of betrayal & motivation in the Korean mob life, A Dirty Carnival concerns a 29-year old gangster working for a middle-rank enforcer whose rise begins after he takes up a job that earns him the big boss' trust & eliminates his boss to take up his position instead. But the real trouble begins when his friend, an aspiring filmmaker, asks him to be a consultant for his debut features which brings forth the events that were buried long ago.

There isn't much to complain in most of the film's aspects as everything is carried out pretty well be it the direction, screenplay, cinematography, editing or performances but the one thing I admire most about it is the action choreography for it puts on screen an impressive example of street fighting in the opening moments only & repeats itself at regular intervals throughout the film plus it's amazingly well accompanied by its electronic score.

On an overall scale, A Dirty Carnival presents a really fine effort from its cast & crew to come out as a nicely crafted crime-drama but it's also missing that X-factor that elevates a film like this to a level of greatness & the sum of the parts don't add up as well as I would've liked it to. Still, A Dirty Carnival works in many ways & steadily captures the zero tolerance principle of Korean mob life. Recommended for fans of Asian cinema.