News: GANGNAM BLUES Targets Lee Min-ho Fans with New Edit for China

By Pierce Conran

Yoo Ha's gangster epic Gangnam Blues will be released in China next month but local viewers will be treated to a different cut of the film. In order to capitalize on star Lee Min-ho's big fan base in the region, changes were made affecting his character.

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Review - FRIEND: THE GREAT LEGACY Shares Little with Original

By Pierce Conran

12 years is a long time in the film world but for Korean cinema it seems like almost an eternity. In 2001 I had yet to seen an Asian film, let alone was I aware of Korean films. Yet when I did dip my toes in two years later, Friend (2001) was among the first Korean films that I saw. With its nostalgic air and easily relatable theme of friendship, delivered through a conflation of coming of age, high school and gangster tropes, it wasn’t hard to see why it became the most successful Korean film of all time. Though its record has since been broken many times over, the film’s reputation lives on.

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UDINE 2013: An Ambitious Korean Gangster Film: New World (신세계, 2013)

Part of MKC's coverage of the 15th Udine Far East Film Festival.

Ever since I discovered Korean cinema, I’ve been a fan of the industry’s frequent experimentations with genre. Almost every film that comes out of the country seems to be an amalgamation of different tropes but there is one genre that has remained for the most part untouched: the gangster film. When Korean filmmakers decide to make a gangster film, they tend to leave experimentation aside and instead look to emulate some of world cinema’s most beloved criminal narratives.

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An Ambitious Korean Gangster Film: New World (신세계, Sinsegye) 2013

Ever since I discovered Korean cinema, I’ve been a fan of the industry’s frequent experimentations with genre. Almost every film that comes out of the country seems to be an amalgamation of different tropes but there is one genre that has remained for the most part untouched: the gangster film. When Korean filmmakers decide to make a gangster film, they tend to leave experimentation aside and instead look to emulate some of world cinema’s most beloved criminal narratives.

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Man on the Edge (박수건달, Baksoogeondal) 2012

The gangster comedy, once one the biggest money-spinners in the Korean film industry, has fallen out of favor recently. Truth is, most high concept comedies struggle in the Korean marketplace these days. Yet for many years they were the king of the charts. In 2001, the gangster comedies Kick the Moon, My Wife Is a Gangster, Hi Dharma and My Boss My Hero, as well as Jang Jin’s hitman comedy Guns & Talk, all featured among the year’s top seven films. A year later, the first entry in the Marrying the Mafia franchise (which would spawn five installments) rode its way to the top of the chart.

What is it about the mix between gangsters and comedy (frequently romantic comedy) that has so enticed Korean viewers? Narratives featuring organized crime have always been popular the world-over and things are certainly no different here. However, in a male-driven country dominated by social hierarchy, it could be that the infantilization of these hoodlums was a welcome source of respite within the safe confines of the country’s multiplexes. In any case this clever piece of genre hybridity burned bright for a number of years before suffering increasingly diminishing returns. A few months ago, the final installment in the Marrying the Mafia franchise failed to attract over a million viewers, demonstrating that the format was running on empty.

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BIFF 2012: Tumbleweed (창수, Chang-su) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

The gangster film, a genre that has found its way into just about every national film industry on the planet, is no stranger to Korean cinema. While the country has produced its fair share of compelling gangland sagas, stretching from the 1997 trio of Beat, No . 3, and Green Fish to more glossy and baroque undertakings such as A Dirty Carnival (2006) and this year’s Nameless Gangster, some of the most memorable films have been those that have been filtered through the prism of Korea’s filmmaking mainstay, the melodrama. Romance and gangsters have been combined to great effect in films such as Kim Jee-woon’s A Bittersweet Life (2005) but some of the most surprising examples have featured criminals at the bottom end of the pecking order.

Song Sae-heun’s Failan (2001) featured Choi Min-sik as a hapless thug who develops feelings for his shame immigrant wife (Cecilia Chung) following her death. The film did away with the gloss and style we often associate with gangster films and instead focused on a bizarre relationship which in many ways acted as a path of redemption for Choi’s character. Similarly, Yang Ik-june’s Breathless (2009) followed a gruff and violent money collector in a rundown neighborhood who develops an odd friendship with a high school girl (played by Kim Kkottbi) that could become his salvation.

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PiFan 2012: Osaka Violence (大阪外道, Japan) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

The main prize-winner at this year’s Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, Takahiro Ishihara’s Osaka Violence, is a gritty film which employs both a realistic aesthetic and deadpan excessiveness to bring home its point. As its title suggests, the film concerns the prevalence of violence in Osaka, it is depicted as the most commonplace of acts, a cyclical ritual that is absorbed from a young age through the ebb and flow of everyday life.

The film begins with a group of young boys loitering on some farmland. The owner comes up to shoo away the trespassers but is subjected to a tirade of disrespect and abuse. They walk off, leaving the old man stunned. Things have changed in Japan and certain elements of society, such as respect, are evolving but not always in a good way. This demonstration of apathy is a logical starting point for the film. The boys’ trip through their Osaka neighborhood introduces us to an increasingly apathetic subset of its inhabitants. First they cross a gangster who is friendly to them and gives them money. Their new found fortune is swiftly taken away by a group of older boys who threaten them but this new gang is in turn beaten to a pulp by an older, burlier gangster who demands a toll for crossing under ‘his’ bridge. Suddenly, their lack of respect towards the old farmer from the opening scene is not so shocking.

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Jopok Week: Im Kwon-taek's The General's Son 3 (Janggunui adeul 3) 1992

The final installment of Im Kwon-taek’s The General’s Son trilogy was not particularly well-received upon its release in 1992 in Korea.  Unlike the previous two installments, The General’s Son 3 was not the year’s highest grossing film, that honor went instead to Marriage Story, the ‘planned’ feature which is credited in part with the entry of the chaebol into the film industry, who modernized it, paving the way for the technically-superior Korean cinema of today.  Im stopped making actioners after this but he wasn’t absent from the top of the charts for long as his masterful Sopyonje was released the next year and became the first Korean film to cross the one million admissions mark in Seoul, even though the Korean market share of the box office fell to a record low of 15.9% in 1993.

At the start of The General’s Son 3, Kim Do-han is not released from jail, but he is in exile and his gang has been dispersed in Mapo-gu. The Japanese now control the district and Kim leads a peripatetic life, wandering from town to town, making connections and enemies along the way.  The first half of the film sees him on the road in a series of questionably strung-together sequences as he meets characters from previous entries in the franchise and makes some new ladyfriends while the back half of the narrative focuses on his return to Mapo-gu and leads up to the final and long-awaited (sort of) showdown with the local Yakuza gang. 

After an opening film that had quite a lot to say and did so in a balanced, if imperfect, manner, the conclusion to The General’s Son trilogy does little more than rehash themes and story tropes from the previous two films.  It adds nothing new, just presenting us with more fights, nightclub scenes, and women.  The first film affixed a fairly convincing historical and sociological pretext upon the generic template of the gangster film but The General’s Son 3 abandons what made the series a hit in the first place and revels in the threadbare mechanics of genre filmmaking.  Just as in The General’s Son 2, it’s all about the fights this go-round and women, but in a much more sexualized manner than in previous installments.  Gone is the simplicity of its predecssor, which was happy to give us a straightforward story which led from one fight to the next , instead we have to suffer Kim’s perambulations through foreign towns which bog down the narrative and add up to a big waste of time when he finally returns to his hometown.

The depiction of women in The General’s Son 3 was quite problematic and surprising given Im’s involvement.  The main love interest, who is gorgeous, is handled like a commodity when Kim meets her.  He stands up for her and they begin to fall for each other but then he treats her like a piece of meat too, only know she is more than willing to submit. One of the running gags in the film is her screams of pleasure which resound throughout the night. Perhaps Kim Doo-han’s virility is legendary, not that I have heard as such, but this repeated joke smacked of sexism for me. I can say that compared to the other female protagonists in the trilogy, who exit the narratives without having changed from when they first appear on screen, this new character is a little more three dimensional and features an arc which is passably integrated into the main narrative.

There is some attempt at character development, while Kim was a hero figure in the first and fell prey to vanity in the second, his current exile essentially leads him on a path to redemption and he returns to Mapo-gu the conquering hero.  However the characterizations here are not well fleshed out and in any case it is difficult to make anything out in the muddled narrative.  The good news is that it doesn't really matter as they fight scenes, while exceptionally contrived, are still very enjoyable, even if they get repetitive after a while.  We meet new gangs in the new towns and there's even some opium dealing and sex scenes thrown in for good measure.  

My biggest disappointment is that ultimately the film series didn't go explore what I was hoping it would, namely Kim Doo-han's transition from a gangster to a political figure.  It certainly hints at it but the wheels are never set in motion which I thought was a shame.  I suppose Park Sang-min would have been too young to portray an older Kim but now that 19 years have elapsed I imp Mr. Im to consider The General's Son 4 as his 102nd film!  The General's Son 3 is the weakest entry in the franchise but all in all I had a great time with this series despite its flaws and I look forward to revisit it again in its entirety soon.

See also:

The General's Son (1990)
The General's Son 2 (1991)

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Jopok Week: Im Kwon-taek's The General's Son (Janggunui adeul) 1990

According to an article from The Korea Times, the first Korean gangster film was Gallant Man, released in 1969.  Following this a flurry of gangland films were released, highly influenced by the contemporaneous Japanese Yakuza pictures made by such prolific luminaries as Kinji Fukasaku and Seijun Suzuki.  Among these was the film series by director Kim Hyo-cheon on Kim Doo-han, a real life prominent Korean gangster in the 1930s who became a politician in the 1950s.  During the heavy censorship of Chung Doo-hwan’s administration (1980-88) gangster films were no longer part of Korea’s movie landscape but they made a comeback in a big way in the early 1990s.

Korea’s revered cineaste Im Kwon-taek has directed 101 films to date, many of those were made in his busier days in the 1960s and 70s, during which time he made a number of action films before attempting more serious works in the 1980s such as Mandala (1981) and The Surrogate Woman (1987), which toured international film festivals and made him, at that stage, the most prominent Korean filmmaker.  In 1990, shortly after the fall of Chung Doo-hwan, Im began his own series on the life of Kim Doo-han with his The General’s Son trilogy (1990-92).  The first film was a huge hit and became the country’s highest grossing film, a record that had been held since 1976 by Winter Woman.  For Im the trilogy was a brief return to action cinema before moving on to the more contemplative Sopyeonje (1993), which once again broke the all time Korean box office record and is considered by some to be the greatest of all Korean films.

The first The General's Son chronicles Kim Doo-han’s unlikely rise to power in the Japanese-occupied Mapo-gu district of Seoul in the 1930s.  The narrative opens with his release from prison, having spent a year behind bars for a petty crime.  With his newfound freedom he returns to a shack under a bridge where a friend of his still resides.  He is a beggar at the very bottom of the social ladder but he is also Korean which makes him equally oppressed by the Japanese occupiers.  He finds work at the local theatre, which is considered the heart of Mapo-gu and his featured prominently in all three films.  He recites lines through a loudspeaker detailing the plots and stars of the theater’s latest offerings as he trudges through the district’s muddy streets with a marching band.  Kim's pay is 10 won a day and two free tickets to the movies.  Proud of himself after receiving his first honest wage he goes to a local bakery only to have two thugs demand to see his film tickets.  Naively, he hands them over and they promptly leave, ignoring his protestations.  Following them outside he continues to demands his tickets back but as they begin to aggress him, he easily fights them away and they scamper off.  Not thinking about what’s just happened he goes back to his table, oblivious to everyone’s stares.  Shortly thereafter a captain in the local gang walks in, slaps him for beating his boys, and offers him a job.  So begins Do-han’s quick ascent in the local gang hierarchy.

It must be said that in some ways the film can seem very tacky.  It looks dated, the sounds in the over-choreographed fights are outrageously loud, and the improbable story is told with little subtlety.  However the film actually has a huge amount to offer and in many respects is very well-made.  Not to mention the fact that its brashness and brevity is positively infectious.  The best elements of the film come together in an extraordinary sequence that mostly takes place in the cinema.

Doo-han now works at the theater, which is gang-controlled, as all sorts of different characters stream in for a screening and we are brought up to speed with many of the relationships in the film as well as how the neighborhood interacts.  The local courtesans, idling their free time during the day, flirt their way in for free while at the other end a group of young boys, in a rather disgusting sequence, try to sneak in through the women’s lavatories only to be caught and beaten, save for one who hides in the isles.  The smell gives him away and Kim grabs him but instead of throwing him out he suggests that he should have brought a spare change of clothes, like he used to do.  A man comes on stage to introduce the film and the lights go down.  He narrates the silent pro-Korean picture as watchful Japanese eyes look on from their censor’s box.  Someone then taps on Kim's shoulder and he rushes outside as a big fight between the top Korean school fighter and a rival is about to start.

Im deftly handles the many elements of this sequence, which reminded me both of Cinema Paradiso, which had just been released the year before, and Martin Scorsese's rich and evocative film style.  There is a great flow, energy, and richness in detail throughout.  It’s pretty electrifying stuff and for me, the highlight of the trilogy.

If you pay attention, there is a lot of attention to detail in the film.  The set of historical Mapo-gu is magnificent though it may not be realistic.  Costumes are very important and also serve to tell the story.  Kim’s attire in particular evolves along with his character.  We first meet him in tattered clothing and as he becomes a member of the gang he begins to wear clean clothes.  One night, after impressing everyone with his fighting skills his boss gives him his leather jacket which Kim then wears with pride.  Soon he his wearing suits and hats, another sign of power, which become flashier and perch higher on his head the more he ascends.

The great strength of The General’s Son is that it is a simple but effective story with plenty of worthwhile subtext that is told with exuberant alacrity.  In effect Im has crafted a film with prescient social commentary within the pleasant trappings of a genre, something that would become very common and be experimented with even more successfully in later years.

See also:

The General's Son 2 (1991)
The General's Son 3 (1992)


Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Jopok Week: Top 10 Korean Gangster Films

This post was updated on August 14, 2014 and expanded to a Top 12 in order to make room for some more recent Korean gangster classics.

To get us started in this week's celebration of Korean gangster cinema (Jopok Week on MKC), I've compiled my top 10. However, an interesting question is what constitutes a gangster film? There are a number of films which may have made it onto this list but I wasn't quite sure that they fully fit the bill, such as Tazza: The High Rollers (2006), The Yellow Sea (2010), The Unjust (2010), and Moss (2010).  

So what makes a gangster film a gangster film? And more importantly, what are your favorites?

Scroll through the below gallery to find discover our favorites and let us know if you agree.

Intro - 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 - Best of the Rest

Top 10 Lists

Year  2020 - 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016
2015 - 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010

2010s (Top 50) - All Time (Top 25)

Genre

Gangster - Horror - Revenge

Korean Gangsters: Next week is Jopok Week on MKC!

Next week will be Jopok (Korean Gangster) week on Modern Korean Cinema!  I'm currently panning an essay on Ha Yu's exceptional A Dirty Carnival (2006) and in seeking to develop my arguments I have gone back to rediscover older Korean gangster films.  Sadly I have not been able to get my hands on any of those made in the 1960s and 70s but next week I plan to review some of the following significant Korean gangster films of the 1990s:

The General's Son (1990)

The General's Son 2 (1991)

The General's Son 3 (1992)

Beat (1997)

Green Fish (1997)

No. 3 (1997)

If anyone would like to contribute a feature or piece on any Korean gangster films please feel free to drop me a line at pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com.

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

The Show Must Go On (Uahan segye) 2007

Gangster comedies are something of a specialty in Korea and have been among the most popular films on the Korean box office charts for over a decade. While the outright Korean gangsters films, such as A Dirty Carnival (Biyeolhan geori, 2006) and A Bittersweet life (Dalkomhan insaeng, 2005), have been technically-proficient and high-quality, it is those that have blended family and comedy into the mix that ultimately have brought in the most viewers. Both Marrying the Mafia (Gamunui yeonggwang, 2002) and My Wife is a Gangster (Jopog manura, 2001) were so popular in this regard that they spawned trilogies. The Show Must Go On probably falls in between these two categories. While certainly being an effective comedy, its violence and ruminations on failure, betrayal and family loyalty ultimately set it apart from the slighter fare mentioned above. However, despite the presence of Song Kang-ho, the biggest star in Korea, this effort barely made it over a million admissions.

Melodramas has been a staple for Korean audiences ever since there have hade their own industry and the so-called 'Golden Age' of Korean cinema in the 1960s was dominated by them. Since the resurgence of Korean films in the late 1990s very little has changed in that respect. The most successful Korean film of the 1990s prior to 1997 was Im Kwon-taek's venerated Sopyonje (Seopyeonje, 1993) and in 1997 The Letter (Pyeon ji, 1997) and The Contact (Cheob-sok, 1997) landed at the top of the chart in what was the first year that the industry began showing real signs of life.

In the last ten years, there have been numerous films that have blended family melodrama with other genres. Perhaps this phenomenon began with Kim Ji-woon's feature debut The Quiet Family (Choyonghan kajok, 1998), a black comedy that draws on melodramatic conventions which was popular enough to warrant a Japanese remake by Takashi Miike (The Happiness of the Katakuris). There have been many examples of this cross-blending of film genres, notable examples include: Bong Joon-ho's The Host (Gwoemul, 2006), a melodrama that also plays out as a monster movie, a comedy and even a political allegory, and Youn Je-gyun's Tidal Wave (Haeundae, 2009), a disaster movie that set up its effects-laden climax by being a convincing melodrama for most of its running time.

Han Jae-rim's The Show Must Go On at first seems like a gangster movie but it turns out to be a film about a man trying to keep his family together. Unlike other depictions of gangsters in the Korean peninsula, nothing is glorified in this narrative. Kang In-goo (Song Kang-ho) is a high-ranking mob boss, he wears nice suits and drives a Mercedes and yet he lives in a small, squalid apartment with his wife and child. He does act like a gangster whether he is forcing a hostage to sign a contract or bribing his daughter's teacher for better grades, but these actions never solve any of his problems, as Darcy Paquet said in his review of the film "What works so smoothly in other gangster movies only seems to bring on further complications and embarrassment here. The methods are the same, but the results are slow in coming". Perhaps In-goo is trying to conform to the idea of being a gangster as opposed to being naturally inclined towards this sort of behaviour.

What is very clear from the very start is that In-goo works quite hard. When we meet him in the first scene he has fallen asleep at the wheel of his vehicle during evening traffic and throughout most of the narrative he seems fatigued. Compared to the gangster portrayals that we are used to seeing, In-goo doesn't seem to get too hot under the collar (although he is not altogether levelheaded either) and the only time he ever really shows any energy is when he is forced to fight for his life. What is clear is that he cares very much for his family and seems to want to amass enough funds to buy them a house and send his daughter to study abroad in Canada, just like he did his son. Like other middle-aged males in Korean cinema he seems powerless to do right by his family, despite good intentions and a position of authority. In-goo, the gangster boss who can't handle a few construction workers is just like the hordes of detectives and cops who make so little money that they need to take bribes and can never solve any crimes.

Korean cinema has long made a point of showing citizens who conform to society and do everything it asks and still end up betrayed and left for dead. Considering that I am discussing a gangster film, the following point may be pushing it a little far, but I think In-goo's relationship with his boss is a similar representation: his boss believes In-goo to be more capable than his brother, yet he is ranked below. When the boss's brother tries to kill In-goo because of petty jealousy, In-goo is the one who ends up paying the price.

Roads have often been used symbolically in Korean cinema, most famously in Sopyonje where a pansori practicing family constantly wander along the road. Memories of Murder (Salinui chueok, 2003), also starring Song Kang-ho, begins and ends by a roadside in the country, which represents the circularity of a futile search. The protagonists in these films seem to be searching for lost homes, which can just as easily be interpreted as identities. With the separation of the peninsula and the troubled history and politics of the country many filmmakers simply placed their characters on roads that never seemed to lead anywhere.

In-goo ends up on a road with the corpse of his boss's brother in his trunk, after narrowly escaping his henchmen and a big car pile-up with his life. He is a wounded animal who has been driven to desperation and when is boss arrives, sees what has happened and pulls out a rifle from his trunk, it looks like the end for In-goo. Fortune smiles on him this time though as he is the one who prevails. However, the narrative does not stop here, he goes to jail briefly, joins his friend's gang and finally gets the house he wanted for his family. They don't stay for long, he sends his daughter to Canada and his wife goes with her. Thus, In-goo ends the narrative in a higher socio-economic rank, with his big house and big tv but he is now alone and miserable.