Tough-as-nails gangster/revenge pictures are to Korean Cinema what horror movies peddling vengeful spirits and supernatural curses were to Japan: phenomenally successful on the heels of a breakout international hit; a viral strain of knockoffs and remakes in the aftermath; a fad that’s presently run out of steam. A brace of new films attempting to breath life back into Korea’s criminal underworld deliver mixed results; the less effective of the two, No Mercy for the Rude, spoofs a genre already made fun of by the likes of A Bittersweet Life, which in its overearnest appreciation of chivalry and machismo, became an accidental parody in and of itself. Park Chulhee’s film occasionally straddles an artful line between humour and seriousness – the kind of tonal shift Bong Joon-ho (The Host) has a patent on – but his comic elements are essentially restricted to absurd caricatures: a ballet-dancing contract killer for one, while the film’s doomed lead, a mute hitman saving money for a speech-correcting operation, is played by none other than Shin Hakyun. Whether a lazy typecast or an admirer’s nod to Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Park has a certain eccentricity in mind, but never quite finds the right balance: the black comedy a second thought rather than the impetus behind a film that concedes ultimately, if ruefully, to the final image of a dying man, flailing in blood, cradled in the arms of his lover to the melodrama of orchestra strings.

Propelled by one extraordinarily brutal scene of turf war – where two vehemently opposed gangs square off in combat under a highway overpass soddened in ankle deep mud – A Dirty Carnival ignores humour outright, revelling in the opportunity to choreograph as much flagrant violence into its dog-eared story of a gangster’s rise through the organised crime ranks. Twenty minutes in, and the film seemingly peaks with a sustained sequence that can only be described as Braveheart with baseball bats meets (Alan Clarke’s) The Firm. Licking their wounds, the gang’s battered men express concern that someone actually died in the fracas, and it’s with a similar disregard that the film’s determined mid-level thug, Byeong-du (Jo In-seong), sets about ‘acquiring’ a promotion and raise. Though never quite reinjecting the same testosterone of his opening pseudo-Old Boy melee, Yoo Ha applies the genre’s requisite components (the girl, the double-cross, the inevitable showdown and tragic denouement) with impressive urgency, and the film, even at nearly two-and-a-half hours, rarely strays from riveting. Even better, gangster fascination is tempered with a parallel trajectory: a high school friend, Min-ho (Nam Gung-min), emerges fresh out of the film school hoping to write and direct a triad movie, and needs to pick Byeong-du’s brains for research. The corresponding ambitions come to a head, but not before art-imitates-life in a stunning betrayal of trust.—Tim Wong