“Swindlers” Theatrical Poster
Director: Jang Chang-Won
Cast: Hyun-Bin, Yoo Ji-Tae, Bae Sung-Woo, Park Sung-Woong, Nana, An Se-Ha, Choi Duk-Moon, Choi Il-Hwa, Heo Sung-Tae, Kim Tae-Hoon, Jung Jin-Young
Running Time: 117 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Coming just a year after Jo Eui-seok’s Master, The Swindlers leans on the same true life story of a CEO who defrauded victims out of their savings, thanks to an elaborate pyramid scheme. Unlike Master though, here the crime is used as a jumping off point, one which is used to frame a tale which feels more like a slice of The Thieves-lite. The events that Master takes a whole hour to cover are here breezed through in the first 10 minutes. The character that Lee Byung-hun played is switched to Heo Sung-tae, in a fleeting role which has him end up in Thailand rather than the Philippines, before a newscast reports that he’s believed to have died in a fire.
His escape from Korea is made possible by a master forger, in a welcome cameo by Jung Jin-young (Gangnam Blues), who provides him with a fake passport. However after making a late night exchange at a port, later on police find Jin-young hung in a nearby building, in what seems like an apparent suicide. What nobody counted on though was the fact that Jin-young’s son knew where his father was going, and doesn’t believe for a second that it was a suicide. Played by Hyun-bin, a swindler himself, he proceeds to spend the next 8 years attempting to get to the bottom of exactly what happened on the fateful night, which is where the story picks up from.
There can be no denying there’s a distinctive air of familiarity during the opening of The Swindlers. The scene of defrauded victims wailing on the floor of the office the scam was run out of could, at this point in Korean cinema, be stock footage. We’ve seen it countless time before in recent years, but the belief remains that nothing gets a Korean audience riled up more, than seeing those living on the breadline swindled out of whatever savings they have. It’s rather ironic then, that having established the devastating effect that these swindlers have on the innocent population, first time director Jang Chang-won then proceeds to make the characters we’re expected to relate to swindlers as well.
The Swindlers may be Chang-won’s directorial debut, notably also working from his own script, but he’s certainly not a stranger to directing. A protégé of Lee Joon-ik, the director behind the likes of The King and the Clown, Radio Star, and Battlefield Heroes, Chang-won frequently worked as assistant director on many of Joon-ik’s movies. However while Joon-ik’s productions are well known for their strong characters, in his debut Chang-won crafts a story which is frequently at odds with the audiences need to relate to the characters in it. This is mainly due to the fact that The Swindlers relies on a series of reveals which serve the purpose of showing a characters true intentions, but as a result, onscreen it translates to never really knowing exactly who it is we should be rooting for.
This issue is confounded further by the fact it’s never 100% clear exactly who the main character is. Sure, on paper it should be Hyun Bin, as the son seeking revenge for whoever was behind his father’s death, but as a swindler himself, often his actions and motivations are kept in the dark, to allow for a plot point to make sense later on. As a headlining follow-up to his confident co-starring turn in the previous years Confidential Assignment, The Swindlers falls short of convincing he can do more than strut around with a variety of different haircuts. Depending on which way you look at it, this may not necessarily be such a bad thing, as it means that, intentionally or not, the lion’s share of screentime goes to Yoo Ji-tae, as a prosecutor who wants to get his hands of Sung-tae.
Ji-tae hasn’t had a strong presence on the big screen in recent years, however in the late 90’s through to mid-00’s he was one of the most recognizable faces in Korean cinema. In 2003 alone he played Choi Min-sik’s captor in OldBoy, as well as taking the lead in the horror Into the Mirror, and sci-fi Natural City. His prosecutor character is one that will do anything to catch his target, and as such he’s been leveraging the services of a trio of swindlers, that he hopes will help secure him a promotion. The trio are played by the always reliable Bae Sung-woo (Office), Ahn Se-ha (One Line), and K-pop star Nana (who acted alongside Ji-tae in the K-drama The Good Wife). These guys even operate out of their own base, masterminding jewellery heists to pickpocketing, and when it’s revealed Sung-tae is back in Korea, they team up with Ji-tae and Bin to take him down.
Unfortunately nobody seems to have told Ji-tae he’ll be onscreen the most out of everyone, essentially becoming the proxy main character, and I have a feeling not even Chang-won realised that the final product would end up that way. As a result, many of his scenes are treated as if he’s a supporting character, playing out unremarkably with no sense of gravitas in relation to what’s actually at stake. When we witness exactly how far he’s willing to go in order to get promoted, it also becomes clear he’s not the most trustworthy character, an inescapable irony considering he plays a prosecutor working in the midst of swindlers and thieves.
The lack of focus on one central character could well be argued to be a side effect of cramming so many in. Sung-woo, Se-ha, and Nana as the trio of swindlers also get their moments in the spotlight, although as the only female in the story, it’s unfortunate that Nana’s role doesn’t go beyond looking sexy (which she admittedly does well). It’s also easy to speculate that a lot of footage likely ended up on the cutting room floor. We know Bin went to Thailand to hunt down Sung-tae, and it’s apparent that Chang-won and co. took a trip there to shoot on location, but the total time spent in Thailand onscreen amounts to about 30 seconds. Most likely a lot more was shot, but was considered superfluous once it went to the editing room. This would also explain the feeling of Bin’s reduced screentime.
The Swindlers does come with a couple of bright spots from its supporting cast. Choi Deok-moon (Assassination) plays a bumbling real estate conman, the type of which had it been a higher budgeted production, would no doubt have been played by Oh Dal-soo. His energetic performance brings the breezy caper like atmosphere Chang-won appears to have been aiming for with the rest of the production, but fails to realise for the most part. Likewise for Park Sung-woong (reuniting with Bae Sung-woo from Office), who plays an acquaintance of Sung-tae that visits from China to strike a business deal, and is lulled into falling for Nana’s charms. His smooth business man may see him on auto-pilot, but he does what he can with what little the role has to offer.
Ultimately The Swindlers finally comes off the rails in its final third, as Chang-won goes for a twist heavy conclusion that quickly begins to feel tiresome. At best his ambitions are admirable, however at worst some of the revelations are just plain illogical, and result in some severe head scratching (in particular, the introductory scene of the trio of swindlers makes no sense after one particular revelation). For all of Bin’s vengeful spouting of how he’s going to kill his father’s killer as soon as the opportunity arises, The Swindlers decides to bow out with a remarkably safe and uneventful finale. One of the criticisms I held against Master was how the finale attempts to turn it into an action movie, but if the alternative is what goes down here, then in retrospect I’m fully behind the sudden decision to go guns blazing.
With a closing scene that strongly hints at a sequel, one would hope that if a follow-up does somehow get made, it goes the Wolf Warrior route and blows its first instalment out of the water. As it stands though, while Chang-won’s first time going solo appears to have all the right ingredients for a rollicking adventure, the fact is they only come out half-baked, and don’t really go well together. In the end, just like the victims have been swindled out of their money, as an audience if feels like we’re swindled out of our time.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5/10
At the risk of sounding horribly uncultured, I am really hesitant to pop in a mainstream Korean film unless it promises a little bit of action or a knockout setpiece (obviously this doesn’t include less commercial fare like “Bleak Night” or Kim Ki-duk movies). It sounds like “The Swindlers” offers neither, which is what I feared from the trailer. Couldn’t they have just gone the route of “The Thieves” and lifted an action sequence from Tsui Hark for the ending?
Fortunately for the rest of us, Paul, you’ve spared us 117 minutes of our lives we can now devote to a more engaging movie…!
I confess that for me Korean cinema remains, and has for a long time, the best in the world. The real issue is exactly these kind of mid-budget productions, that more often than not simply choose to riff off bigger budgeted flicks, usually helmed by top shelf directors.
So for every ‘A Hard Day’ we have a ‘The Advocate: A Missing Body’, for every ‘Man from Nowhere’ we have a ‘Man of Vendetta’, and for every ‘The Divine Move’ we have ‘The Stone’. The problem is they all end up looking like uninspired TV movie versions of the originals.
I mean even the poster for ‘The Swindlers’ is a rip-off of Ryoo Seung-wan’s ‘Veteran’, check it out here!
A very interesting review. It sounds like the producers were mad at the film makers for making the swindlers into heroes, but editing it to make Yoo’s prosecutor look good among other things just made an even bigger mess.
It seems pretty absent minded of the film makers to take an issue people are very sensitive about, and treat it like a game.