Tag: gangster

Roxy (Roxy)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

The eponymous Roxy is a fight dog who has so far killed 12, no… 14, dogs. For no good reason, he bites a pedestrian’s hand, causing his walker to hand a wad of banknotes to seemingly unflappable, hired taxi driver Thomas Brenner (Devid Streisow) to straighten the situation out. Then his new fare has put Roxy on the back seat, his panting head inches away from Thomas’ face. “You have to buy a muzzle for this dog,” Thomas calmly explains to his fare. “It’s the law in Germany.”

Thomas, whose working life consists of picking up a fare from the railway station, taking them where they want to go, and then returning to the station to pick up the next fare, loves routine and order. In his intermittent voice-over running through the film, we learn that his grandfather was in the Wehrmacht and his father the Stasi, the latter eventually committing suicide in 1990. He has learned from his late mother to never look people in the eyes, a survival mechanism, a way of remaining invisible.

In his flat, his inherited collection of die-cast model cars and motor vehicles sits in lovingly sorted, pre-arranged positions on wall-mounted ornament shelves. His set of dice sit in ordered rows on his pristine tray except when he rolls them for his own amusement, always replacing them in exactly the same place. The tray is covered in tiny images of iconic, naked women, occurring at regular, spatial intervals. He often visits the local bar for a quiet drink, where conversations with latent nymphomaniac barmaid Sara (Valliamma Zwigart) inevitably end in sex.

His latest fare, though, is set to turn his highly ordered life routines upside down. Levan (Vakho Chachanidze) and his friends are criminals or gangsters or some such, we never find out exactly what, but clearly not to be messed with. Levan is impressed with Thomas’ ability to stay cool under pressure, pays well and offers more work. A ride or two later, he’s joined by his pretty, young wife Lisa (Camilla Borghesani) and young son Vova, eight (Raphael Zhambakiyev). Vova asks a question: which is stronger – lion or tiger? It’s a question that sets Thomas thinking.

And then one night, they’re in a restaurant and someone attempts to shoot them. Whatever their history is, these people are on the run and their pursuers are close behind. At this point, Thomas might try to extricate himself from the situation, but he doesn’t. Levan is impressed that Thomas never asks about his background but simply does whatever needs to be done. Above all, Levan is concerned not for himself but for his wife and son. Thomas finds the group a safe house. And Levan offers Thomas a piece of advice about dealing with animals which flies in direct contradiction to his mother’s: always look them in the eyes.

In the scenes that follow, Thomas is asked by Levon to help them obtain fake passports. Surely there must be someone he knows who knows someone who knows someone. Thomas starts asking around to see what he can do. Then he is contacted by people claiming to be agents of a foreign power in pursuit of these men, who want him to help them. They, too, pay well. The only way he is going to survive is by playing one side off against the other, which could prove quite lucrative. What’s more, Thomas gets on really well with Vevo, and Lisa is a very attractive woman…

Also in the picture are Levan’s underlings Andrej (Ivan Shvedoff), Niko (Nicolos Tsintsadze) and the none too intelligent Sasha (Sandro Kekelidze) not to mention a troupe of avant-garde theatre actors who do a nice sideline in fake passports – among them a woman in a blue bodysuit with a fake penis and a truly fearsome, blonde-bewigged man (Waléra Kanischtscheff) sporting a turquoise pantomime dress.

Not only is this one of the most cleverly plotted and executed thrillers in years, which never misses a trick, it’s also about some very interesting ideas. What exactly is power, and how is one person able to wield it over another? When is the time to do as you’re told, and when is the time to strike out and take decisive action? Which is stronger – lion or tiger? We follow Thomas’ journey as he moves from invisible everything-in-its-right-place man towards something far more dangerous, brilliantly expressed in Streisow’s superb performance.

The film is a masterclass in casting, with a superb clutch of performances from the various supporting cast members, including the small boy and, for that matter, the dog. It’s also flawlessly structured, shot and edited. And consistently inventive to boot.

Moreover, it’s a welcome addition to that small, select subgenre of the taxi driver movie which includes such seminal outings as Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Taxi (Carlos Saura, 1996), Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004) and A Taxi Driver / Taeksi Woonjunsa (Jang Hoon, 2017). Collateral, in which a mysterious stranger arrives into town and hires a taxi driver to drive him around, probably the closest to it. The film is a real winner and distributors should be falling over themselves to acquire it in territories round the world. An utterly enthralling, stunner of a thriller which deserves to be a massive, worldwide hit. Don’t miss.

Roxy plays in Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Watch the trailer below:

Shooting the Mafia

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Letizia Battaglia followed a most dangerous career path – capturing the life and crimes of the Mafia in Palermo, Sicily’s capital. John Gotti may have loved celebrity, but none of the Mafiosi from the old country appreciated a young, brazen woman confronting them with a Pentax. ‘If he could, he would have killed me’, Letizia remarked of Luciano Leggio, a leading figure of the Sicilian Mob.

Her work, presented in stark monochrome, depicts death and suffering in the arresting style of Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths. Thematically, however, Letizia’s work may share more with that of Alexander Gardener, who used photography – then in its infancy – to confront the public with the horrors of the American Civil War.

This is what compelled Letizia to take some 600,000 photographs for the L’Ora newspaper – to shatter any romantic notions of the Cosa Nostra by depicting the rank brutality of their war on civil society. And it worked, her catalogue of dead men, women and children made a powerful impression on the people of Sicily, driving support for the heroic anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

Shooting the Mafia isn’t just an organised crime documentary, though. It is the story of a girl and woman making her way in Sicily’s patriarchal society. Longinotto presents her subject in an intimate, engaging way, placing Letizia’s narration against a combination of stock and archival footage to tell her story.

However, this look into her personal life can overstay its welcome. Letizia’s early life is given a quaint, romantic quality, yet the continued emphasis placed on her later relationships can be of dubious interest. After all, it is her association with organised crime that makes her interesting, not her love life. Yet, despite this, there is a resonant tenderness about how she and her lovers talk about what their relationships meant. There is no acrimony, just an open discussion of why things transpired the way they did. It’s a reflection of the contentedness that can come with age.

Her work in public life makes for the most interesting viewing, though. Letizia states the importance of having a clean political system and she is absolutely right. Corruption is the harbinger of dysfunction, destitution and death. And the man who took the fight to the Mafia – Giovanni Falcone – was a hero. When asked about his life-risking commitment to the state, he answered, ‘it’s not about state, it’s about society’.

And the island society he was trying to save was wracked with terrible violence. ‘We’d never known violence like it, there were 1000 murders one year’, Letizia recounts. She confronted this menace head-on, documenting as many crimes as she could. Indeed, it was the photos she didn’t take that ‘hurt her the most’.

Shooting the Mafia is in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th.

Extreme Job (Geukhanjikeob)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Radio voices. “Target in position.” “Unit 2 on roof.” Four criminals in a dimly lit apartment playing Mahjong. A knock at the window. A raid. But embarrassed lady cop Jang (f) (Lee Hanee) and her male boss Captain Ko (Ryu Seung-yong) can’t operate their window cleaning slings. The cliched, action packed raid by SWAT in which the criminals are swiftly arrested is visualised by the villain, but the actual police operation is a series of hilarious bungles, the criminals only “caught” when one of them is hit by a coach and the others are stopped by the resulting multiple car crash pile up. In a brutal debriefing with their chief, Captain Ko loses his position to young rising star Captain Choi, who’s just successfully caught a major criminal gang.

In order to save their reputation, Ko’s unit set up surveillance on the gang’s apartment where Hong and his men are awaiting the return of big boss Mubae (Shin Ha-kyun). There being a Chicken restaurant opposite, the cops take it over as a cover to watch the criminals’ premises. It turns out that one of their number Ma (Jin Sun-kyu) has an incredible family recipe for Suwon Rib Marinate Chicken which is an immediate success and overnight turns their fast food joint cover into a hugely profitable business. The team discover the joys of running a food emporium except for Young-ho (Lee Dong-hwai) who finds the others are becoming to busy too fulfil their police duties and back him up when needed.

Other memorable characters include merciless, ruthless and highly effective, female fighter Sun-hee (Jang Jin-hee) who uses a knife to put Hong on crutches on a whim from Mubae and rival gang leader Ted Chang (Oh Jung-se) who threaten to atart a turf war with Mubae.

Starting off as a lightweight caper, this is one of those movies that effortlessly shifts genre throughout, from caper to violent actioner to comedy to food porn and back again innumerable times. It’s aided no end by a clever soundtrack by a composer who understands the effect different pieces of music have on the audience, from the opening pizzicato caper strings to the closing titles which sounds like a spaghetti Western. Somewhere in the middle, a wounded character who may die is briefly underscored by the cantopop song from Asian mega-hit gangster outing A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, producer Tsui Hark, 1986).

As if this wasn’t already a huge crowd-pleaser, for the climactic fight sequence it reveals that Ko’s five man team are, for example, a Chinese national Judo champion (Ma), an Asian Muay Thai champion named Jang Bak after Ong Bak (Jang) while he himself has the nickname ‘Zombie’ because he’s sustained 12 stab wounds and just doesn’t die. These and other attributes are pressed into service with Ko taking bullet after bullet in pursuit of Mubae. This South Korean gem is proof positive, if it were needed, that even for the kind of entertaining movies on which it prides itself, Hollywood really isn’t the only game in town.

Extreme Job plays in LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival.

Thursday, November 6th, 20.35, Regent Street Cinema, London – book here.

Wednesday, November 20th, 18.20, Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast – book here.

Saturday, November 23rd, 15.30, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham – book here.

Watch the film trailer below:

Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

America has superheroes. Essex has hard boys. Very hard boys. They would wipe the floor with the Avengers. Despite being the third film after Pat Tate’s (Craig Fairbrass) untimely demise at the end of Rise of The Footsoldier (Julian Gilbey, 2007)— part of a real gangland murder that has been mythologised, Batman-like, in three different movies — Rise of The Footsoldier 4: Marbella dives even deeper into the backstory of the most popular character in the franchise (and perhaps all of Essex). While never remotely coming close to the gangster-in-paradise heights of either The Business (Nick Love, 2005) or Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000), Marbella is an undeniably entertaining Essex-lad romp that even further blends black comedy with cartoonish violence to a gleeful fever-pitch.

It starts with our hero Pat Tate finally out of prison, sometime in the mid-90s. He walks into his Southend club and automatically notices there’s no pills left. He moves out to Marbella to look for Frank Harris (Larry Lamb), the man who double-crossed him. Sadly Frank has died (literally shagged to death) yet another lad, Terry Fisher (Andrew Loveday) has taken his place. Although sceptical to work with the successor to his traitor, he accepts the job as Fisher’s bodyguard in exchange for a huge shipment of pills. Things get more complicated however, when another gangster appears on Fisher’s turf, leading to an inevitable bloody showdown.

This is the Essex gangster distilled to its most essential form. British gangster film regulars, and fine actors when they want to be, Terry Stone and Roland Manookian, play the Rosencratz and Guildenstern to Tate’s Hamlet, two hapless fools charged with getting the cash to Marbella before getting back in time for Nigel Benn’s big boxing match (a real-life tie-in only men over 40 will understand). Taking a connecting flight in Amsterdam, they spend a reckless, prostitute-and-weed-filled night in the Red Light District, soundtracked to Corona’s Rhythm of the Night. It’s completely stupid, but I laughed throughout. By rarely taking itself seriously, and by holding itself to no standards whatsoever, the expletive-ridden, casually misogynistic and callously violent Marbella achieves a kind of comic-book purity.Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella

The strange success of the movie — which at a basic plot, acting and writing level, is quite flat— is embodied by Craig Fairbrass’ go-for-broke performance. Tate is the quintessential anti-villain of gangster cinema, a terrifying caricature with few redeeming features. He makes Joker look like a soppy mug. There has never been a problem Tate couldn’t punch in the face. Often coked up to his eyeballs, he is brash and impulsive, moving around like an early 90s Steven Seagal but with the same man’s current day physique. This is a guy who beat up a waiter in the original Rise of the Footsoldier for leaving him his bill before he asked for it. Who slits a restauranteur’s throat with a pizza cutter for refusing to give him the toppings he wanted. Here the ante is turned even further up, mauling his enemies with forks, golf clubs and other assorted instruments. It’s all completely ridiculous, but Fairbrass doesn’t blink, single-handedly holding the entire film together and somehow making it work.

As its the same coterie of actors that appear in almost every direct-to-DVD British gangster film, it feels like hanging out and having a few drinks with old friends. Your mileage might vary. It will play perfectly to its target audience: balding men in their 40s and 50s who wear leather jackets with blue jeans. Men who support either Chelsea or West Ham. Men who only listen to New Order, The Stone Roses and Oasis. Men who pay £30 to watch boxing on Sky. Men who think going to Continental Europe means either Amsterdam, Prague or the South of Spain. You know the lads. It will work best in a big group of them. Bring them around and drink every time Pat beats someone up. You’ll get drunk quickly.

Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella is in cinemas and digital on Friday, November 8th.

Holiday

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

While it takes place in consistently bright sunshine near a Turkish habour town, there’s nothing pleasant about the family dynamics portrayed here. Although Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne) arrives at a Turkish airport wearing summer clothing and lugging a case at the start, the narrative wouldn’t do too well in the Bechdel Test as all her dealings with the world appear to involve men and revolve around sex and/or violence – real, implied or refused. Pretty quickly she’s in a parked white car with Bobby (Yuval Segal) and explaining to him that she’s €300 short. He complains that “pretty girls think everything is for free” and gives her a pretty unpleasant warning on behalf of the boss to ensure she’ll never make another mistake like that. Her one and only warning which is never discussed again.

Later Sascha is picked up by boyfriend Michael (Lai Yde) and his number two Bo (Bo Brønnum) in the same white car. They drive to the villa where the rest of the ‘family’ are waiting. Swimming Pool. Drink. Drugs. A couple of other women, one of whom Tanje (Laura Kjær) looks as young as Sascha. There’s clearly money to burn and Michael has put some of it into the tacky hotel where Sascha stayed overnight after her flight.

Male hijinks and larking about quickly give way to something darker. Take the loyal Musse (Adam Ild Rohweder) who barks when playfully called a dog. At one point he puts a foot wrong: he comes back to the villa after someone hasn’t shown up. Michael is concerned that Musse may have lead the police there. They take him from outside into a downstairs room while Sasha, Tanje and a child are sent to watch TV in the lounge. The three turn up the volume to hide the sounds of whatever’s going on in the other room. Later bearing flesh wounds he hands out presents to Michael, Bo and others. Michael tells him everything is okay and gives his an envelope of cash. His philosophy is to punish bad and reward good.

How this works out for the women in this group is much more sexual. Sascha is abused in some pretty unpleasant and explicit ways by Michael, which immediately earn the film a BBFC 18 certificate (and the same for its trailer below, although the material in the film itself is considerably stronger and far more unpleasant than what’s shown in the 18 trailer).

Not all characters here are as nasty. Dutch yachtsmen Tomas (Thijs Römer) is an easy going type who, it later emerges, has given up the cutthroat world of sales and marketing for a life sailing round the world with his pal Karsten (Stanislav Sevcik). Sascha meets the pair in an ice cream parlour queue and later takes Ecstasy with Tomas on the local beach. He’s a nice guy who is later going to wish he hadn’t come anywhere near Sascha.

Holiday consistently looks good with Turkish sun burning into every bright blue skied, daytime frame and the night time environment appearing just as idyllic. No-one can accuse the cast of not trying really hard.

Eklöf previously had a screenplay credit on Border/Gräns (Ali Abbasi, 2018) but her feature directorial debut is nowhere near as complex or skilfully orchestrated as either that, Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018) or Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2018). Both these latter films contain an element of misogyny. Yet while the female-written and -directed Holiday’s intention to express the voices of women placed in positions of submission might be admirable, this backfires in the finished film by failing to offer any way out of a misogynistic cycle of violence in which women are abused by men. A few unsettling scenes and shocks, not least in the closing 10 or so minutes where the piece veers off in one or two unexpected directions, aren’t really enough to lift the whole above that. Perhaps Eklöf should take a lesson from Revenge (Coralie Fargeat, 2018) which at least attempted to turn the tables.

Holiday is out in the UK on Friday, August 2nd. On VoD on Monday, August 26th.

Once Upon a Time in London

Posted on by victorfraga

Charting the fates of two very different criminals from the late 30s to the early 60s, Once Upon a Time in London transports the thirties’ Chicago gangster tale to the East End. A quintessentially British tale stacked with the usual assortment of English geezers, which also brings a unique historical depth to an otherwise well-worn genre.

It all kicks off in 1936 at the infamous Battle of Cable Street, a street-fight between anti-fascists — including communists, Jews and Irish dockers — and Blackshirts, led by Oswald Mosley. The leader on the Jewish side (although history suggests he wasn’t actually there) is notorious gangster Jack Comer (Terry Stone). He is so influential in the East End that he successfully wins the fight, forcing Mosley to retire his troops. Meanwhile, Billy Hill (Leo Gregory) is just getting started: a cocky young upstart, he robs the same jewellery shop twice in one week just for fun.

He owes money to the Whites, who are in opposition to the Italian Sabinis. But when the Sabinis are detained due to the government’s wartime policy, a power vacuum quickly opens up, leading Comer to take control of the underworld. Hill, currently in jail, senses an opportunity, and sends Comer a letter asking for work. Of course, Hill isn’t really looking for employment, but a way to worm his way to the very top.

The result is a predictable albeit entertaining romp through various gangster clichés that is too complicated for its own good. Not content to merely depict one or two rivalries, it shows us several, rushing through the years at a breakneck pace. Given that it is only 110 minutes long, the film feels overstuffed, never giving us time to breathe. Characters die suddenly, often off-screen, go to jail and back within five minutes, and get beaten up only to have their revenge moments later. It would’ve done far better to either extend the runtime — giving us the Leone-esque epic the title deserves — or start in the fifties at the heat of the two men’s rivalry. Instead we get a solid hour and a half of laborious place-setting before a quick half hour resolution.

Additionally, the production design feels strained, dampening the character’s personalities instead of bringing them to life. While even the worst modern ‘geezer’ pictures can be guiltily pleasurable thanks to contemporary soundtracks and shameless depictions of excess, the historical context of Once Upon A Time In London sanitises the worst of it, making it feel all rather stale. The ways in which government policy and organised crime intersected during the war, or the media promoted criminals such as Hill to the top of pile, is truly fascinating, but this isn’t explored with much depth.

We come to these films for their violence and what it says about man’s worst tendencies. Once Upon A Time in London contains many such violent moments — including one man’s face being used for a dartboard — but they never manage to land with any real force. Director Simon Rumley has the tendency to score the most brutal of beatings with music from the time, cutting out the sounds of blows entirely. This is symptomatic of the film as a whole: which rarely pulls a punch.

While the acting is serviceable (with Stone standing out as a ruthless crime baron) they are ultimately let down by a run-of-the-mill script, subpar direction and endless diversions. Although containing some fascinating ideas, and a side to British criminal history that is under-portrayed compared to the Swinging Sixties and Cocaine Eighties, Once Upon A Time In London barely compares to Once Upon a The Time in The Midlands (Shane Meadows, 2002).

Once Upon a Time in London is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, April 19th. On Netflix from January 11th, 2020.

Three horrific short movies

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The first short film of this horror triptych by British filmmaker Neville Pierce is the psychological terror Lock In (2016, pictured above). It boasts a clever little script concerning a gangster Jimmy (Nicholas Pinnock) visiting a pub just after closing time ostensibly to ask Richard the landlord (Tim McInnerny) for protection money. Richard, meanwhile, is soon to be a granddad: his pregnant daughter Lucy (Sing Street’s Lucy Boynton) is working behind the bar and hits Jimmy over the head with a bottle, knocking him out. Unbeknownst to Lucy, Richard and James have a history as former school teacher and difficult pupil.

Aside from some in car shots and a few exterior pub moments, the whole thing takes place inside the pub. The script packs in a lot in its 10 minutes and is a real gift for a director. Pierce responds with some fantastic casting: McInnerny, a prolific actor who deserves much wider recognition, plays a character who seems to change as revelations alter our perception of him. The catalytic Pinnock lends the whole thing an edge while Boynton is terrific as the daughter confronted with unpleasant home truths (or are they lies?) about her father. Pierce also has a striking feel for pace: the whole thing never lets up and moves along very nicely.

The second short Bricks (2015) adapts Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Cask Of Amontillado in which one nobleman lures another to his wine cellar to exact a cruel revenge. The Russell/Pierce adaptation shifts the tale to the present day and the two characters to stockbroker William (Blake Ritson), the owner of the wine cellar, and builder Clive (Jason Flemyng), his unsuspecting victim. Which means that the script has the virtue of consisting of just two characters on one set, which makes it reasonably easy to produce as a film. But that virtue could so easily be the film’s downfall: hard to imagine anything potentially more boring than two people in a room.

Fortunately for us viewers, as the two characters from their very different worlds talk, Russell avoids that pitfall and delivers a taut sparring, a game of cat and mouse. Pierce again demonstrates astute casting skills and elicits from both actors performances among the most memorable of their considerable careers. Flemyng claims this film is one of the few times a director has actually given him direction – and you can feel it as you watch. The short has also been championed by no less a director than David Fincher (who directed Flemyng in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008).

For this writer, however, the best of the three films here is the black and white photographed Ghosted (2016). Again, Russell’s script posits a deceptively simple idea. A widow in search of love and romance visits a restaurant on a series of five dates (the fifth is a man who happens to be at the next table when date number four goes wrong) accompanied by the ghost of her late husband whom she alone can see. It’s an excuse to explore male foibles – narcissism, personal baggage, obsession with tech, earnest intellectualism.

The five dates are beautifully cast, among them Jason Flemyng as a man unable to forget the woman who left him, a very different but arguably equally impressive performance to the one he gave in Bricks. Christien Anholt projects just the right amount of wry observation and world weariness as the dead husband, but the actor who really brings the tale to life is leading lady and comedienne Alice Lowe (Prevenge/2016, Sightseers/2012) who is as good here as she’s ever been (which is saying something). Pierce pulls his various elements together brilliantly: comedy is a notoriously difficult genre to do well, and this one is very funny indeed.

So, an intriguing horror story adaptation, a tense gangster genre outing underpinned by relationships and an hilarious romantic comedy with supernatural overtones. Quite an impressive range of material and all three well executed which makes me, for one, want to see more by this writer-director team. I have no idea what Russell and Pierce will do next (the latter has already made another short with a different writer, unseen at the time of writing) but if they can come up between them with a feature length piece as good as these shorts, we want to see them make it. Meanwhile, the three shorts just released are something of dirty treat.

The Three Neville Pierce Shorts are available to view on Vimeo from Monday, February 5th. Find them here.

The films will also screen on YouTube channel Tall Tales, the new online home for indie films. Lock In will play on Tall Tales from February 6th, Ghosted from February 13th and Bricks later in 2018.

A Dirty Carnival (Biyeolhan Geori)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Byung-doo, 29, (Jo In-sung) is a smart, lean and hungry gangster on the mean streets of Seoul, in A Dirty Carnival. As a debt collector he successfully collects payments from difficult customers. Yet his immediate boss Sang-chul (Yun Je-mun) pays him so little that Byung-doo must constantly beg him for the money to pay his mother’s apartment rent. Looking out for those beneath him and determined to better himself in the wider organisation, Byung-doo realises that its overall boss Hwang (Chun Ho-jin) would like nothing more than to get the sycophantic Prosecutor Park (Kwon Tae-won) off his back. Sang-chul clearly isn’t going to do anything about it so Byung-doo takes the task upon himself. He and one of his men drive into the back of Park’s car in a secluded spot and he kills the prosecutor when they get out of their cars to exchange details.

Byung-doo’s best mate Min-ho (Min Nam-koong) is an aspiring film director who can’t sell the script for the gangster film on which he’s working because the studio producer he approaches doesn’t think it’s realistic enough. After meeting up with Byung-doo, Min-ho chances to observe the latter and his men caught up in a vicious fight to defend a nightclub’s premises. He realises that his old pal is a genuine, real life gangster and decides to mine him for all the background information he possibly can. The studio subsequently accepts Min-ho’s “much more realistic” script from which he makes a highly successful film. Alas, many of the scenes are lifted directly from life, including Park’s murder. Byung-doo eventually realises he may have to kill his friend in order to survive. But it may already be too late for both of them.

Before the two men’s relationship sours, Min-ho reintroduces Byung-doo to the girl he fancied in school Hyun-joo (Lee Bo-young), who now works in a bookstore. Their developing relationship is going well until the night a work colleague sexually harrasses Hyun-joo on the street and the outraged Byung-doo brutally beats him up in front of her. Horrified, she immediately walks away from him and out of his life, but he’s still fixated on her and wants the relationship to continue.

Unlike much of the more recent, slicker and formulaic Korean gangster fare, there’s a gritty sensibility recalling low budget, Hong Kong marvel Made In Hong Kong (Fruit Chan, 1997). Yoo’s narrative charts its way between compelling gang fights, ruthless killings, good and bad romantic episodes and down to earth, everyday scenes involving people unlucky enough to have for a relative a gangster whose deeds will adversely affect their own lives.

A Dirty Carnival would make a terrific double bill with GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990). Both boast well observed characters in terms of gangsters and their wives or girlfriends. Both involve loyalty and betrayal. As people are beaten up, killed or buried alive, the viewer is compelled to watch in horrified fascination. Looking at the plight of the gangsters’ womenfolk, we’re torn apart. Yet we like Byung-doo. He gives his job everything he’s got and treats the men below him in his organisation with great respect, looking out for their interests.

Like GoodFellas‘ three protagonists, Byung-doo is an outsider trying to work his way up the organisation’s ranks with the odds stacked against him. Tasked with moving poor residents out of an area so it can be developed to line his boss’ and his own pockets, it becomes clear just how ruthless and self-centred a social parasite he is. Alongside his traumatised girlfriend Hyun-joo, when he commits acts of extreme violence we want to get as far away from him as possible. We like him as a character in a movie just like we like the three guys in GoodFellas despite their horrifically violent acts, but we might not want anything to do with any of them in real life.

A Dirty Carnival is well-paced and grips the viewer in an emotional vice from start to finish. Ten years on, this neglected masterpiece has lost none of its ability to engage and shock in equal measure. It deserves to be far more widely seen.

A Dirty Carnival plays in the London Korean Film Festival taking place until November 19th, and it hits the road on the 12th, visiting various dirty cities across the UK.