New World (2013) The Perfect entry point to Korean Gangster Movies (Review)

Crime movies are a captivating microcosm, there are vast differences to be found depending on where in the world a specific title was made. When you go further afield than America and the UK, there are big differences to be found. Hong Kong Crime Movies saw the ascendancy of a relatively small island climb to the upper echelons of world cinema (in the 80s and 90s) like how the revenge thriller did with Korea. Just using these two nations to stress my opening point. In Hong Kong, such movies consist of frenetic shootouts and martial arts, a status quo partly informed by law and partly by a history dating back thousands of years. South Korea, on the other hand, is much slower and as getting a gun is far more difficult and therefore a rarer commodity, action is built around knives and baseballs bats. Within the crime corner of world cinema, Korea is something of a law unto itself.

The uniqueness goes even further to the point where the generic constructs mean all gangsters movies share the same shallow gene pool. Whether we are talking about Nameless Gangster, The Merciless, A Dirty Carnival or [the] New World, from Eureka’s Montage Pictures Strand, there is a uniformity that is rarely if ever strayed from. However, given that this is one of the few genres that hasn’t made the leap to UK audiences in any significant way means that for many, Park Hoon-Jung’s directorial debut will be (for want of a better word) brand new and fresh.

New World is stuffed with entry points, there’s the aforementioned status as the first movie of this kind to be released to UK audiences. Beyond that, there is the appearance of one of the two most recognizable faces from Korean Cinema – Choi Min-Sik (Old Boy), and the director Park Hoon-Jung, who as a scriptwriter penned I Saw the Devil (Kim Jee-Woon) and the massively successful the Unjust (Ryoo Seung-wan). Korean Cinema isn’t exactly full of good entry points so when one appears it should be pounced on especially by all those with a passing interest in what this far-flung country has to offer.

In this slick melting point, we have a policeman undercover in a powerful gang family (Lee Jung-Jae) who is neck-deep in a rumble to decide who will be the next head – a plot thread that draws comparisons with Johnnie To’s Election movies. Lee Jung-Jae works with a wild-man who cannot be trusted but is much more intelligent than he appears (Hwang Jung-Min). Manipulating both of them and the entire Goldmoon organisation is Choi Min-Sik, and while this role could be filled by any elder statesman it is good to see Choi as he doesn’t appear in movies all too often. Place into this a wild melodramatic streak, a desire from Lee Jung Jae’s character to escape his life of crime, countless double crossings & betrayals and a level of intrigue that is a little hard to process on first viewing – there is a lot going on. While dense, there are far weightier examples which do all this and more. A chief example would be Yoo Ha’s Gangnam Blues, a movie that needs you to take notes. The one significant negative to all these well-worn standards is that it ends in much the same way any other Korean Crime Movies do. An issue that will be bypassed thanks to this being one of the few movies of its type released in our country.

Perhaps calling New World predictable is a poor choice of words. Choi Min-Sik’s police investigator is one of the reasons behind this, his manipulative ways insert some pivotal left turns that shun the norms. His character, Kang, is simultaneously having a crisis of confidence with the police force whilst also doing absolutely anything in his power to bring the Goldmoon organisation under his heel. While the end result may not go anywhere new, the journey in getting there is filled with enough to keep even the most ardent of fans on the edge of the seat. That is a true mark of a film that is successful, to use a threadbare toolset and take it in some new directions. There is also a gang of killers from Yanbian (China), that family serves as a comic relief, that is a more significant rarity than anything brought by Choi Min-Sik – as good as he is.

Korean Cinema doesn’t often get an airing here in the UK, so whenever a film is plucked from the obscurity it is time for jubilation. New World is a tightly and intelligently plotted Crime movie from a part of the world that offers a unique flavour. Albeit, a flavour that gets insane in its repetition the more you return to it. Korean Cinema exploded onto the world scene with its brilliant revenge sagas, so I shall close this with a few magical words. There is a powerfully savage and bloody scene in a car park that climaxes with an intense knife fight in an elevator, a scene that’ll make you think Oldboy who?

Thanks for reading our review of New World

For more Movie talk, check out our podcast CINEMA ECLECTICA