Though not as slick as later works like Shiri (1999) and Joint
Security Area (2000), No. 3 was a presage of things to come in Korean
cinema. A vibrant film made by
young people, reveling in anarchy, chaos, poetry, and philosophy. More than the
other successful gangster films of 1997, No. 3 ended up being a significant
breeding ground for future stars of Korean cinema. Ask any western cinephile what Korean film stars they know
and the most likely answers you’ll get are Choi Min-sik and Song Kang-ho. Choi, as one would expect, is quite
excellent but the stand-out has to be Song. While he featured in Hong Sang-soo’s debut The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well the
year before, it was in No. 3 that he
made a name for himself.
Rather than focussing on plot, No. 3 is more of a character
piece involving gangster Tae-ju (Han Suk-kyu), his aspiring poet girlfriend
Hyun-ji (Lee Mi-yeon), an aggressive prosecutor (Choi Min-sik), and a very
strange hitman (Song Kang-ho). Through
a series of set pieces and discussions between characters, the film covers a
huge amount of ground. It is
self-reflexive in its use of black humor, underscoring the absurdity of modern
Korean society. Much has been
written and said about No 3 but I would like to draw on a coupe of points.
More than any Korean film that came before it, No 3 employs
a myriad of stylistic tricks such as: Colors; chiaroscuro lighting;
composition; monochrome; music; fastforwarding; point-of-view; slow motion;
freeze frame; strobe; and breaking the fourth wall (like staring into camera). That last point in particular showcases
how self-reflexive the film can be and braeaks up the narrative for the purpose
of enticing the viewer to read the film differently. The film is also entrenched is Western literature, citing
authors like Virginia Wolf and even having a wispy, diminutive characters named
Rimbaud, after the famed romantic French poet. As Korea has changed throughout the 1990s, it has embraced
new ideas and progressive Western thought.
One of the more interesting relationships in the film is the
one between Tae-ju, the titular gangster No.
3, and Dong-pal, the aggressive, foul-mouthed public prosecutor. They engage in a couple of discussions
which explore the nature of their conflicting lifestyles. In one, Choi criticizes people who
judge a crime’s act rather than it’s perpetrator, a significant question in
moral philosophy. Regarding a
crime, do we evaluate it in terms of the act, the perpetrator, or the
consequence, as the utilitarians do?
I dare not get into any deep discussion on this subject, lest I expose
myself as clueless charlatan but I am fascinated by this distinction.
On the surface it seems pretty simple as we tend to judge
crimes on the act themselves, but it’s easy to consider a few variations which
expose the weakness of such a proposition. Conspiracy to murder is an offence that carries a heavy
sentence and does not necessarily feature any act at all if it doesn’t come to
fruition. In such a case, we judge
a defendant on intent and the potential grievous harm that would have been
inflicted. Looking at the other
side of the coin, it is also possible to judge an act on its consequence rather
than the thought and action that led to it. Utilitarian philosophy, chiefly a product of John Stuart Mill’s
mind, and in large part responsible for today’s judiciary system, concerns
itself with the aftermath of an act.
How much good came out of it versus bad? The deliberation as to the balance of the consequence judges
the severity of the crime or the benevolence of the good deed. The most famously cited example for
this is the dropping of the hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima during WWII. Over 100,000 people died, the act it is
responsible for the largest toll of human suffering in any single act. However, the argument stands that
countless more people were saved because of it. Therefore judging on the consequence of the act, the bombing
was just.
Dong-pal in No. 3
is part of the legal system that means that he should be principally concerned
with crimes but he seems to go beyond his mandate by harassing criminals whose
intentions are to commit crimes.
Normally this role is occupied by detectives which his character, with
his moral philosophy, violent physicality, and foul language would seem to be a
better fit for. Late in the film
Dong-pal shares a drink with Tae-su’s girlfriend Hyun-ji, who says “What I hate
is not a sinner, but a sin itself.”
This is in direct opposition to Dong-pal’s philosophy but she asks him
to help Tae-su and look on him as a younger brother. Instead of vilifying the sinner, is it possible to reform
him. Essentially I think the point
is to what extent is society to blame and can a figure of authority like
Dong-pal prevent crimes by reforming the perpetrator and therefore removing the
bad intentions? Perhaps I’m
reaching a little far with this but since the fall of the autocratic Chung
Doo-hwan administration in the late 1980s, the role of authority in Korean
society has changed an enormous amount.
More than just about any other Korean gangster film, No. 3
features a very strong and well fleshed-out female character in Hyun-ju. The boss’ wife, while less clearly
drawn, acts as a classic femme fatale who, as a result of her domineering
affair with Rimbaud, plays a part in setting off the irreverent and chaotic
climax, one of the greatest sequences in 90s Korean film.
While later Korean gangster comedies would frequently
lampoon hoodlums, cutting them down in size, No. 3 does so in a more
interesting fashion. Tae-ju briefly
becomes No. 2 in his gang after displaying his loyalty and wit but he is
demoted after being stabbed and Ashtray takes his place. Ashtray is a big lump of a character
who brutally beats people with his namesake, which he stores down his pants,
and does little else. The violence
is shocking and far from glorified and demonstrates how unseemly this facet of
Korean society can be. Darcy
Paquet’s piece, posted earlier today for Jopok Week, on ‘The Rise and Fall of
the Korean Gangster Comedy’, explores what went wrong with later gangster
comedies after this promising start.
No. 3 features a number of wonderful scenes, including a
great playground fight between Han Suk-kyu and Choi Min-sik, and just about
every scene with Song Kang-ho who is hilarious and delightfully strange. There’s much more to be said about this
film than what I have explored but I will wrap up my discussion here. I look forward to revisiting director and writer Song Neun-han's minor
Korean gangster masterpiece in the near future.
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