Dirty carnival

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!

I'd heard a lot about this film, so I was a little surprised by the overall tone, which I felt wasn't very realistic.

The film follows a sub-commander-type gangster who starves under his immediate superior whilst he looks for the opportunity to prove the worth of himself and his men, as well as keep his actual family with a roof over their heads. That opportunity eventually arrives, but it leads to mistrust and dog learns to eat dog, which is about all I can say without ruining the plot.

A lot of users here have commented on the acting being great - and it really is! The fights are excellent (even though most men would be dead if hit with a baseball bat repeatedly to their unprotected chest - NOT a spoiler), and the flow of the story comes naturally. Wow, what's not to love, right?

Unfortunately, the film just cannot decide if it's a fanciful drama glamorising gangsters or a serious characterisation. The romance between the beautiful childhood friend and the lead lacks any kind of spark and it's not until the gangsters are scaring normal people out of their homes for the sake of their boss' stake in a housing development project that we realise they are actually supposed to be nasty people, which, until then, only seemed to be their opposition.

Overall then, A Dirty Carnival is an enjoyable enough flick, but there are better gangster films in both the Asian and Western world and given that the director couldn't seem to decide in what light to make the film, it's impossible to rate it any higher.

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.

We got to see "A Dirty Carnival" at the Asian-American Film Festival here in San Francisco last week. The movie is truly amazing. The action sequences, the music, and the acting were all fantastic.

I think In-Seong Jo (lead actor) will have a very long career in movies. He'd be perfect for Hollywood movies too. His performance in this role lead me to do some research on his other movies - I'll be renting/buying them soon.

Hopefully, Hollywood will not try to re-make this film. It's perfect as is. American audiences are just going to have to get used to reading subtitles to see great movies.