Dirty Harry Korean style
During a stakeout a corrupt cop, under investigation by Internal Affairs, has his face slashed by a mysterious character wearing a raincoat. A connection is made between a brutally murdered elderly couple not far away from the previous incident and this rain coated man. The cop believes the couple's son might have involved in the murder and decides to investigate him.
So you have here two characters in supposedly respectable occupations (one a cop, the other a fund manager) who ain't angels. This is more obvious in the cop's physical appearance, his drug dealing and his sharing a hot bath with Korean sort of yakuza, even though the introduction of the manager character played by Lee Sung-jae (a familiar face now in the West starring in films such as Attack the Gas Station, Barking Dogs Never Bite & Art Museum by the Zoo) is quite revealing too. Masturbating and swearing in the shower in an interesting shot that completely isolates him, then we see him sharing a breakfast and playing with his wife and son in the warmth of a comfortable house. I have to say that the first 20 minutes of the film are rather interesting because the character's ambiguity still play an important role. Then all falls apart simply because of the cop's sort of rediscovery of his duty after seeing the dead bodies of the elderly couple (or is it he is only jealous at the manager's lifestyle). It all becomes a bit of a farce that w e're supposed to take seriously as the film has to make serious compromises after such a bleak beginning. "Nobody does something like that to somebody's parent without any motive" he says "for me they are public enemies". I hate to judge films by comparing them to others but Public Enemy has a too much of a Dirty Harry influence (this really put me off), a too cliché supportive boss, who is got to deal with the more bureacratic and politically correct higher hierarchies of the police department, and a array of weird characters, all criminals, that helps the cop to catch his so-called Public Enemy. The cop's trademark speech when confronting criminals really got on my nerves and not many in the audience found it funny anyway.
So you have here two characters in supposedly respectable occupations (one a cop, the other a fund manager) who ain't angels. This is more obvious in the cop's physical appearance, his drug dealing and his sharing a hot bath with Korean sort of yakuza, even though the introduction of the manager character played by Lee Sung-jae (a familiar face now in the West starring in films such as Attack the Gas Station, Barking Dogs Never Bite & Art Museum by the Zoo) is quite revealing too. Masturbating and swearing in the shower in an interesting shot that completely isolates him, then we see him sharing a breakfast and playing with his wife and son in the warmth of a comfortable house. I have to say that the first 20 minutes of the film are rather interesting because the character's ambiguity still play an important role. Then all falls apart simply because of the cop's sort of rediscovery of his duty after seeing the dead bodies of the elderly couple (or is it he is only jealous at the manager's lifestyle). It all becomes a bit of a farce that w e're supposed to take seriously as the film has to make serious compromises after such a bleak beginning. "Nobody does something like that to somebody's parent without any motive" he says "for me they are public enemies". I hate to judge films by comparing them to others but Public Enemy has a too much of a Dirty Harry influence (this really put me off), a too cliché supportive boss, who is got to deal with the more bureacratic and politically correct higher hierarchies of the police department, and a array of weird characters, all criminals, that helps the cop to catch his so-called Public Enemy. The cop's trademark speech when confronting criminals really got on my nerves and not many in the audience found it funny anyway.
- quinolas
- May 7, 2002