Director Kang Woo-suk dresses up his diatribes about the social ills of modern Korea in the well- worn finery of the cop-vs-serial-killer thriller so beloved by Hollywood. Disheveled cop Sol Kyung-gu, unrepentantly violent and perpetually on the take--because, let's face it, that's just how thing's get done in Korea--relentlessly pursues a dapper, smarmy financial whiz (Lee Sung- jae, who he believes killed his parents over his father's decision to remove a large chunk of money from a big investment deal in order to save an orphanage from the bulldozers. There's no doubt Lee is guilty of the crime--we see the act in all it's squishy glory, and he further confounds the investigators by randomly killing a hapless stranger to make all the murders appear to be the work of a serial killer, but Sol knows better, and will use every dirty trick at his disposal to put this doggy down. The real target of director Kang's venomous social criticism is quite obviously the soulless corporate culture he seems convinced has poisoned Korean society and subverted traditional family values far more than corrupt law enforcement ever could, and which he views as a wellspring of self-obsessed Armani-clad sociopaths who would slit their own mothers' throats to score a big ROI, only here the metaphor isn't actually a metaphor, it's the central plot device! (I'm guessing he read "American Psycho" or at least saw the movie; certainly Lee's icy villain would make an ideal overseas pen-pal for Bret Easton Ellis' Patrick Bateman). As in TWO COPS 1 and 2, the director sides squarely with the overworked, underpaid cops, and he lovingly (and humorously) illustrates the complex, even necessary web of corruption and deception they must weave in order to maintain the status quo.
Review of Public Enemy
