The Con Artists (2014) (DVD) (2-Disc Limited Edition) (Taiwan Version) DVD Region 3

Kim plays Ji Hyuk a con artist who makes a very fine living through cracking safes and dealing in stolen antiques and jewellery, working with his friend Goo In (Ko Chang Seok, The Face Reader). Things change when they take on a third member called Jong Bae (Lee Hyun Woo, Secretly, Greatly) a top-rated hacker, who has a worrying reputation for apparently betraying his partners, and pull off an ambitious scheme robbing a high-class jewellery store. Unfortunately for them, it turns out that the store is owned by crime boss President Cho (Kim Young Cheol, A Bittersweet Life), who forces them to take on a near-impossible mission to steal $150 million from the notoriously secure Incheon Customs building.

The Con Artists belongs very much to the safe school of modern Korean film making, being perfectly content to follow in the footsteps of other hits and tick genre boxes, aiming for solid rather than innovative or impressive. In this case, Kim Hong Sun borrows quite liberally from a long list of films from Korea and abroad, including but not limited to Choi Dong Hun's 2012 megahit The Thieves, the Tazza series, Mission: Impossible, Ocean's Eleven and others. There's very little originality on show, if any, and even viewers who have seen just a couple of recent popcorn Korean crime capers are likely to be very familiar with the setup and to have little trouble guessing how things will play out.

This aside, as he showed with the superior Traffickers, Kim knows his stuff well enough, and the film never really hides its obvious lack of ambition or its purpose as a star vehicle for Kim Woo Bin - fans of the actor certainly won't be disappointed, as he appears in pretty much every scene in a role clearly written around his charms. Though there's never really any worry that he'll get to the end credits without his smirk intact, the film to be fair is generally effective and suspenseful, and Kim keeps things moving along briskly, adding in enough twists and plot revelations to hold the interest. Some high-end production values also help, and the film certainly looks and feels like a blockbuster throughout, even working in some international locations for extra glamour - the film was actually the first Korean production to shoot in Abu Dhabi. Kim does try to throw in a few narrative complications and subplots to up the tension, along with the odd stab at social commentary, though these don't really amount to much, and the film is definitely at its best when bouncing along and focusing on Ji Hyuk as he slinks his way in and out of vaguely threatening scrapes.

The Con Artists is one of those films that's hard to fault on a technical level, or indeed for its modest ambitions. Despite the glaring lack of creativity on show, Kim Hong Sun serves up a couple of hours of insubstantial, somewhat exciting thrills, and for some viewers, fans of Kim Woo Bin in particular, this should probably make it worthwhile.

by James Mudge - EasternKicks.com