Top 25 Korean Films - No. 11

A Dirty Carnival (Dir. Yu Ha, 2006)

Gangsters and Korean cinema go hand in hand and though the country has produced many brilliant mobster films, for me one stands clearly above the rest. With a conventional rise and fall gangster narrative and some handsome but rarely ostentatious mise-en-scene, it may not seem a likely contender for the top spot, but Yu Ha’s A Dirty Carnival, with its deceptively simple exterior, is in fact a rich, densely layered work concealing a number of aces up its sleeve.

With his background as a poet, Director Yu is no stranger to concealing hidden meanings between the lines and the success of his gangster epic comes from a sure command of all the tools at his disposal without ever drawing attention to them. With a well-executed narrative, tense and rhythmic editing and acute spatial awareness, A Dirty Carnival is classical genre cinema at its finest.

Intro - 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Top 10 Lists

Year   2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010 - All Time (Top 25)

Genre   Gangster - Revenge