Dirty carnival

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

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.

A true gangster movie. Raw and harsh. None of that over-the-top Hollywood shoot-them-up garbage. The use of bats and knives is so much more menacing than emptying clips of bullets and not hitting anything.

Good character development and good flow to the movie. It left me wondering what happens to all different characters. I wish there was a huge epilogue but that would have made the ending very soft.

I don't remember ever enjoying a gangster movie this much. I am honestly attached to the characters in this movie and wish there is a book out there (not like I could read it). Highly recommend this movie. Last gangster movies this good was probably The Godfather and Scarface.

The movie is bittersweet, reminding me of "Blow" and "Casino". I refuse to say that it is the Asian counterpart of the above-mentioned movies because I think that does not do Yoo Ha or In-Seong Cho justice.

The cast acted as though each role was made just for them and the accordion laced soundtrack simply added to the irony and hard, cold truth of the subject matter.

But most of the kudos have to go to In-Seong Cho, for letting viewers live through his character (Byung-Doo). Whether it's laughing at his karaoke rendition in the car and club.; his intense, awkward yet realistic fighting skills or the boyish charms oozing when he sees the woman he loves ~ if I knew nothing of the actor I would have thought he was cast to play himself.

It is extremely well done so just watch it and find out for yourself!

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