Gangnam Blues (2015) (Blu-ray) (Hong Kong Version) Blu-ray Region A

Lee Min Ho plays Jong Dae, an orphan growing up in the shanty streets of Gangnam with his childhood best friend Yong Ki (Kim Rae Won, Insadong Scandal), desperately trying to scrape out a living. After their home is destroyed by property developers, Jong Dae ends up joining a local gang caught up in land-grabbing schemes run by ruthless politicians, and quickly starts rising up through the ranks thanks to his fighting skills and cunning. Three years later, now living with retired gang boss Gil Soo (Jung Jae Young, Tabloid Truth), Jong Dae runs into Yong Ki, himself also a gangster and mixed up in trying to seize interests in the increasingly cutthroat Gangnam real estate market. Inevitably, the two friends end up pitted against each other as their organisations are manipulated by the ambitious authorities.

The Korean gangster genre has been on somewhat of a roll of late, with films like Yoon Jong Bin’s Nameless Gangster and Park Hoon-jung’s New World having won praise both at home and abroad. An overcrowded playing field makes it harder for films to stand out, and Gangnam Blues does face somewhat of an uphill struggle in this respect, with a plot that quite clearly doesn’t have much to offer in the way of originality, being similar to the afore-mentioned rise and fall criminal biopics, as well as being very reminiscent of Yoo Ha’s own A Dirty Carnival, not to mention Martin Scorsese’s benchmark Goodfellas.

Thankfully, though familiar to a fault, the film is exceptionally well-made and shows exactly the kind of craftsmanship Yoo has been known for in the past, with obvious attention having been paid to the period setting through costumes, sets and the soundtrack. As well as being easy on the eyes the film has a highly engaging rhythm and narrative flow, with plenty of scenes of often very bloody violence and torture interspersed throughout, along with some expertly choreographed set pieces and bloody, muddy brawls.

Yoo also has a reputation for delving deeply into his characters, and though perhaps not quite up to the same standard of some of his previous works, Gangnam Blues certainly does a better job of this than many other recent genre efforts. While neither his protagonists nor any of the supporting cast are anything new, Yoo does at least ensure that they are for the most part layered figures with their own motivations and machinations. To quite a large extent it’s hard not to see the film as a vehicle for the incredibly popular Lee Min Ho, who’s on decent form as the likeable, if scarcely complex Jong Dae, and watching him head down the usual path is interesting enough.

Kim Rae Won’s Yong Ki arguably makes for a far more compelling part, and after he returns to the film around a third of the way through things pick up considerably. Through their relationship and the various plots and double crosses that pepper the narrative, the film does have something substantial to say about Korean society and politics, more so than the usual odes to brotherhood and the nobility of the criminal code seen in the genre, and Yoo wins points for venturing into some tricky moral territory.

All of this goes some way to making up for the lack of originality, and Gangnam Blues is easily one of the better Korean gangster films of the last few years, standing up there with the excellent Nameless Gangster. It’s a return to form for Yoo Ha after Howling, and proves again that he’s one of the country’s top directors, and one of the very best at getting the most from his characters.

by James Mudge - EasternKicks.com