“The Drug King” Korean Teaser Poster
Director: Woo Min-Ho
Cast: Song Kang-Ho, Cho Jung-Seok, Bae Doo-Na, Kim So-Jin, Kim Dae-Myung, Lee Sung-Min
Running Time: 139 min.
By Paul Bramhall
I finished my review of director Woo Min-ho’s last movie, the excellent Inside Men, by stating my hope that “his next movie is at least on par with what he’s pulled off here.” 3 years later and that opportunity is now upon us, and it comes in the form of The Drug King, a story spanning the decade that was the 1970’s, and the impact that drugs had on it in Korea.
While Inside Men was anchored by a powerhouse performance from Lee Byung-hun, The Drug King enlists one of the most iconic faces of Korean cinema, Song Kang-ho, to carry proceedings. Kang-ho plays a small time smuggler who assists the facilitation of fake watches in early 70’s Busan. A simple man whose only real ambition is to make ends meet for his wife, kids, and unmarried sisters, when an opportunity presents itself to get involved in the lucrative drug trade, the financial rewards make for too good of an offer to pass up.
So begins the overly familiar tale of the small fry who works their way up to be a drug kingpin, and destroy everything that they hold near and dear in the process. The go-to genre movie is of course Brian De Palma’s 1983 classic Scarface, however it’s also been done before in Korea, most recently in 2012’s Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time, which sees Choi Min-sik’s naïve customs officer work his way up the drug trade. So the question is, apart from a stellar performance from Song Kang-ho (which let’s face it, is a given), what else does The Drug King bring to the table which sets it apart from the other entries in the genre?
The answer is, as much as it pains me to say it, nothing. Min-ho’s latest is one of those infuriating failures where the blame lies solely at the director’s feet. On the surface at least, it’s a movie that has everything – a cast most directors would lose an arm for, the amazing production values and attention to period detail we’ve become accustomed to from Korean cinema, and a soundtrack filled with 70’s classics. So what’s the problem? Put simply, The Drug King is a bore. With a runtime of 140 minutes, the pace will likely test the patience of even the most ardent Korean cinema fan (a group that I count myself amongst).
Half of the problem lies in just how tried and tested the story is. We know how these tales play out, so there needs to be some differentiator for the audiences to buy into it – that could be great characterization, a twist on the perspective the story is told from, or a setting we haven’t seen before. The Drug King offers up none of these, instead falling back on the most barebones plot of the everyman who becomes corrupted by the drugs he’s peddling. This could still have been effective if it was at least told in an engaging way, but Min-ho’s script translates awkwardly to the screen, with the changes in Kang-ho’s personality seemingly taking place from one scene to the next, rather than occurring with any kind of natural build-up.
Onscreen there’s also a glaring lack of tension. The drug trade is a dangerous business, however Sang-ho’s entry into the world of drug making and trafficking is remarkably uneventful, with a good 70 minutes dedicated to what feels like an inordinate amount of gurning, dancing, and general idiocy. I know it was 70 minutes, because I checked the runtime at one point believing/hoping that it must almost be finished, only to realise I was just half way through. The first real sign of any genuine tension comes at a party Kang-ho is attending, at a point when he’s already established himself under a fake name in the drug trade, and an officer from the KCIA recognizes him from when he was arrested and tortured several years before. However the issue is quickly resolved, again dissipating any chance to inject some urgency into the pacing.
Out of all the crimes The Drug King commits though, the biggest one is without doubt how it wastes an incredible cast. This is a movie that brings Song Kang-ho and Bae Doona (in her first movie since 2016’s Tunnel) back together, a pairing that resulted in some of the most memorable scenes in Korean cinema thanks to their turns in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host and Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It’s been 12 years since they last appeared in a movie together, but with characters as underwritten and underdeveloped as we have here, the joy of seeing them reunited is short-lived. Throw in supporting roles from the likes Jo Jung-suk (The Face Reader), Lee Sung-min (The Witness), Choi Gwi-ha (The Outlaws) and Song Young-chang (a guy who I swear spent the 00’s dying in every movie he appeared in), the fact that none of them contribute any real significance to the overall plot is a wasted opportunity.
If any positives can be drawn from The Drug King, then it’s in the production design, and the way it incorporates the political turmoil of the time. Kang-ho spends plenty of time jetting between Korea and Japan, and both locations are brought to life through impressive sets, littered with small details like movie posters of the time and old soju bottles. Indeed at times it feels like the most well developed characters in The Drug King are the sets, rather than the actors that populate them. Min-ho has also ambitiously attempted to incorporate the various political controversies of the time (such as Park Chung-hee’s 1979 assassination) into the narrative, with Kang-ho involving himself in various political organizations by day. While such inclusions in and of themselves are interesting, their role in the plot seems like a case of attention grabbing padding, rather than adding any real meaning.
For Hong Kong cinema fans, there may also be one ‘bonus’ positive. For those who never thought there could be a connection between a Song Kang-ho and Jimmy Wang Yu movie – well, Min-ho’s latest is the production to prove them wrong. The 1975 Hong Kong and Australian co-production, The Man from Hong Kong, famously used the British band Jigsaw’s single Sky High as its opening theme, and 43 years later, so does The Drug King! Admittedly, it’s a great opener. What can I say? I’m not averse to clutching at straws.
Min-ho’s latest ultimately saves its final derailment for last, dragging its feet to an ending which shamelessly lifts wholesale from De Palma’s Scarface, as a paranoid Kang-ho locks himself up in his own mansion with his drugs and a collection of shotguns. Derivative as it may be, it should have been one last ditch shot of adrenaline in an already bloated and lifeless slog of a movie, however even the finale can’t bring itself to go out with a bang, instead choosing to go for a disappointing fizzle of a conclusion. It inevitably begs the question of what Min-ho was looking to achieve with The Drug King. Its unwavering focus on Kang-ho to the detriment of everything else arguably doesn’t justify such a long runtime, but at the same time any hint of an interesting subplot fades into the background before it’s given a chance to start. Like I said at the beginning of the review – it’s an infuriating failure.
When Min-ho initially released Inside Men it came in a trimmed down 130 minute version from his original 3 hour cut, which eventually saw the light of day because audiences were left wanting more. With so much peripheral plotting that meanders to nowhere in The Drug King, it could well be the case that there’s a much longer cut of it out there as well, but I find it hard to believe anyone would be able to endure more of its coma inducing pace. For me the jury is still out on Min-ho as a director and screenwriter, however if The Drug King is indicative of the style of movie he wants to make, I’ll clock out here.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3.5/10
In one of The Drug King’s earliest scenes, goldsmith Lee Doo-sam (Song Kang-ho) is brought onboard a ship in the middle of the night to authenticate an illegal shipment of gold. He is told that if he screws up and fails to spot imitation gold, the majority of the city’s jewelry shops will go bankrupt in a snap. It’s an early introduction to the idea of imitation, a theme that courses through the movie. As we will see, Lee Doo-sam tries to play the part of a gangster until he becomes one and then he tries to play the part of a politician until he brings the system crashing down around him. But it brings the idea of imitation to our attention in a negative way as well. The Drug King really wants to look and feel like a Martin Scorsese movie (there is plenty of Brian De Palma’s Scarface in there, too). And I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of imitating the filmmakers who influenced you or the genre, but what’s a shame is that those moments in The Drug King fall so flat. And the other moments where you feel a rush of creative invention are so few and far between.
Taking place in the 1970s, The Drug King tells the true story of how goldsmith Lee Doo-sam was introduced to the criminal underworld and how that led him to smuggling crank between South Korea and Japan. Realizing that drugs were an untapped goldmine in 70s Asia, he set about creating his own little crime outfit, hiring men with expertise and connections that he lacked in order to make it possible. It’s not quite rags to riches, because Lee Doo-sam never appeared to be that hard off, but he does manage to attain a level of power and wealth rarely seen in criminal circles. And he then uses that influence to change South Korea politically, at the local level and more broadly, gaining friends and enemies in equal number.
Lee Doo-sam is a greedy, ruthlessly ambitious idiot. He surrounds himself with more competent men, most of whom recognize that they’d probably be better off without him. But the thing that makes Lee Doo-sam successful is his ambition to do the thing that most think is impossible to do. Also, he manages to subvert expectations by either convincing other’s he’s an imbecile or that he’s smarter than he actually is. But at the core of the film is his pursuit of money and power, no matter the cost. Lee Doo-sam is never interesting enough, or decent enough, to root for. And because the film rarely shows the negative effects of the drugs he’s peddling, it doesn’t even make him out to be that bad of a villain for us to root against. The film’s emotional investment in its characters and their struggles is largely absent.
The Drug King has a curiously comedic take on the criminal underworld. Just the same, there are very few laughs to be had (the timing of one line about divorce is pretty funny, though). And it’s like, are we supposed to be laughing? Are we meant to be having a good time? Too often, it presents drugs as a worthwhile business venture, and only in the final act do we start to see the despair of those lost to addiction. By then, it feels too late. The film is also presented in a golden nostalgic visual style, as if asking us to look back on the events of the film with a sense of whimsy. ‘Ah, those were the days.’
Song Kang-ho (The Host) is my favorite actor in South Korean cinema but I can’t say I’m in love with what he’s doing here. It’s a little too over-the-top. He never finds the menacing evil of Lee Doo-sam’s violent ambitions, only a smile and some crazy eyes. In later sections of the film, Lee Doo-sam becomes convinced he’s being hunted by communists. Here, Song gets to tap into his inner Al Pacino, and comes just short of crying out ‘Say hello to my little friend!’ during a siege on his compound.
Bae Doona (Tunnel) is good in a supporting role, but the part is thinly written and rarely goes beyond being a shiny new thing to distract Lee from his wife at home played by Kim So-jin (No Tears for the Dead). The best supporting player is Jo Jung-suk (The Face Reader), who plays the detective who is on the case to bring Lee Doo-sam to justice.
Writer/director Woo Min-ho (Inside Men) has a couple of scenes of startling violence that make one sit up and take notice. Here, Woo stops trying to beat Scorsese and De Palma at their game, and instead does his own thing. One rain-soaked sequence in which an antagonist is dragged by a car is followed by a nicely edited series of shots of that man being chopped to pieces, intercut with Lee Doo-sam dipping into his own drug supply for the first time. It’s pulpy, eye-catching filmmaking. Another hyper-violent sequence in a sauna is also noteworthy. But these scenes of energy and mayhem are so outnumbered by scenes that we’ve seen done better in countless similar gangster pics.
The Drug King has a lot on its mind. It wants to be a dark comedy mix of themes seen in GoodFellas and Breaking Bad that’s also about drug addiction in Asia, smuggling and greasing the palms of officials, and a police force that wasn’t built to take on such a threat. Lee Doo-sam says that the real villains are the officials who let him get away with it, and maybe he’s right, but the movie doesn’t really wanna tell that story. It’s interested, for a time, in talking about smuggling drugs back and forth between Asian nations, but it drops this, too. And then some of these threads are picked up again right before the closing credits, apparently presuming that we still care about the resolution even after the movie has shown that it does not. It’s uninvolving storytelling. The Drug King is not an offensively bad film, and viewers with less experience in the gangster genre may be more forgiving to its lack of inspired new ideas, but it is a decidedly flat crime epic that starts feeling too long well before the movie is done.
5/10
I didn’t like it either. I’m beginning to think I don’t like Song Kang-Ho. I found myself distracted while watching this and A Taxi Driver. I don’t think I ever finished the latter.
I’d say ‘A Taxi Driver’ is the superior movie to ‘The Drug King’, but I understand your sentiments. For me Song Kang-ho could do no wrong in those 10 years spanning 2000 – 2010, but since then his work hasn’t always been the guaranteed high quality that it once was, even if his acting always remains sold (if increasingly similar in the traits he stamps on his characters). His reunion with Bae Doona may not have worked out, but I’m hoping his role in Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’ later this years turns things around.
Taxi driver was terrific, and Song Kang-Ho was brilliant in it.
The drug king was a bit disapointing but nearly not as bad as you make it seem imho.
Bae Doona is personally not one of my favorite actresses, i think she is a bit overrated, I really like her early work like “barking dogs never bite”, but the last few years I am not a big fan anymore.
6.5 out of 10.
Pingback: Bring Me Home (2019) Review | My Blog