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Chul-joong Kang learns at a very early age, from a childhood
classmate Sang-woo Han, that with privilege comes power and
that power is often abused. As the two boys grow to manhood
they take very different paths in life, Kang becomes a public
prosecutor determined to hold up the rule of law, whilst Han's
corruption only grows ever more ingrained, his soul becoming
black, vicious and murderous. It is only a matter of time
before the classmates clash...
Another
Public Enemy is Woo-suk Kang's follow up to his 2003 Dirty
Harry type film Public
Enemy. This time things are a little different,
Seol plays Kang as both more vulnerable and funnier this time
round. In fact one of the things which did surprise me was
the amount of humour in the film. Han is played, by Jung,
as the epitome of the rich kid gone very bad. Both leads are
well worth watching in their respective roles, though some
of the supporting actors can be somewhat variable in their
performances.
Another niggle with the film is its length. Ultimately, the
story struggles to sustain its near two and a half hours length;
it starts impressively with a well choreographed fight scene
between two competing schools, and quickly settles down to
a very talky middle section before picking up at the end.
A judicious use of the editor's scissors would have made this
a much more exciting affair, but then to be fair to the film
it is more about the mechanism and politics of corruption
than it is about fight scenes. Kang is an honest man fighting
against the sort of institutional corruption that only large
amounts of money can buy.
Not
that the film, when it gets going, leaves out any of the whiz
bang of an action film, which starts about an hour and a half
into the film with a short but terminal car and bike chase.
After that the action is satisfyingly ramped up.
The
disc comes with some nice extras. First,
and foremost, is a feature length, subtitled, commentary from
the director, Woo-suk Kang and Gyeong-gu Seol, who played
Chul-joong Kang and Joon-ho Jung who played the public enemy
and lastly Shin-il Kang, who played the prosecutor Shin-il
Kim. It's a nice relaxing, jokey affair which produces a nice
blend of irreverence and information and is well worth dipping
into after you have watched the film. As this is an action
film there is the obligatory, but welcome piece on the car
chase, one of the films exciting set pieces. Rather than just
a promo, it's a look behind the actual making of this sequence.
This is presented, subtitled, in full screen and lasts for
ten minutes. Last up is the original trailer for the film
as well as a bunch of trailers for other interesting Tartan
releases, two of which I've seen and can highly recommend:
Lady
Vengeance and A
Bittersweet Life and the other two are Infection
and Premonition which both look good from their taster
reels.
Audio
options come in flavours of stereo, 5.1 and DTS, all with
English subtitles. If you've got it go for the DTS as it really
does a good job of demonstrating the pulse pounding soundscape.
So,
not a great film but certainly one worth checking out.
Charles
Packer
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