New World Review
By David Kempler
World of Average
Korea may currently be the reigning champion of producing films of the gangster genre. I'm not sure if it is their primary genre, but they sure do send a lot of these shoot-em-ups to our shores. In the last ten years I have become a fan of Korean Cinema, but Hoon-jung Park's "New World" falls short of the best of Korea's recent output.
"New World" opens with us learning that a crime syndicate has grown to monstrous proportions, combining a few different crime syndicates to the point where they have an identity similar to a conglomerate. One man is in charge, while three or four junior members also have true power, and they all use it ruthlessly, as is evidenced during the open credits where a man is tortured in a way that I actually had to look away from the screen for a moment. I immediately wondered whether the over two-hours in length would send me reeling from one cruel scene to another. Thankfully it doesn't, even though there are some other pretty disturbing scenes.
The other noticeable thing about these criminals is that they all dress immaculately, they appear fearless (no one ever flinches, no matter what is going on around them), they congregate in large groups and endlessly bow to those most powerful, and they laugh at police and everyone not part of their group.
Lee Jeong-jae (Ja-seong) is one of those just below the number one man. It turns out that he is a police plant and his handler, Kang (Min-sik Choi), is pulling all of the strings on the police side. He is the stereotypical tough-talking older cop, who smokes ceaselessly, sneering in the faces of all the big-shot thugs. Jeong Cheong (Hwang Jeong-min) is the Joe Pesci-type character. He is a loose cannon who routinely slaps his underlings and instructs his underlings to slap around their underlings for his amusement. Rather than being scary, it is more of a Three Stooges slap around with Cheong as Moe.
At times the film meanders hopelessly, dragging out scenes for eternities. I think it is an attempt at being arty. "New World" does have moments, though, where it elevates levels of tension to near boiling point. Unfortunately, those moments are not nearly frequent enough. It suffers from trying too hard and either the acting or writing or both are not quite up to snuff. Despite all its negatives, it's not bad, and it has a nice series of twists at its conclusion. This world has been seen many times before, so it is far from new. It is rather the latest version of the genre that so many of us love to love, even when our love is not quite satisfied.
