ikatupe Kim Byung-doo is the eldest son of his family, with two more brothers and a sick mother, their responsibility to provide for their livelihoods and health pressure more and more. For some time involved in the local mafia, our protagonist even reached a certain success, being the head of a subgroup. But that's not financially enough, Kim lives a life as good as or worse than people his age, and the prospect of growing up in the mafia shrinks to the point that his "supervisor" is a chupim and fears to put him in a more relevant role.While this is taking place, his classmates make a reunion. There he reviews his high school passion and also an old friend, now a young filmmaker. This school reunion will draw two more points from the story, the relationship with Hyun-ju and the resumption of friendship with Min-ho.Throughout history, the Mafia president suffers with a small problem and scale Kim to solve it. The solution involves the murder of a prestigious prosecutor. The young gangster takes care of the service and immediately suffers an existential crisis. He begins to weigh his poor family, his old love that does not sympathize with being a thug and the very fact of killing an innocent person. Distraught, Kim goes to Hyun-ju's house, which readily offers a friendly shoulder.Hyun-ju managed to produce some things, but nothing relevant. He has been working on a screenplay for a long time, demonstrating the life of gangsters. Its versions are discarded in sequence, lack truth in the text, according to the producer. The friend's shoulder resolves to appropriate Kim's confidences and rewrite his final script in a new outfit.The death of the promoter and the final script brings problems for all involved directly and splashes in the others. Despite the existence of many films about the genre, Biyeolhan geori surprises by treating the subject in another way, with originality and script that interconnects all the subplots with harmony. As typical of Korean cinema, the photograph is beautiful and well marks the efficient direction of the film. Unlike his countrymen, the film does not gush blood or feelings, his biggest bet is on human relations and the limit to conquer what is desired.

grandmastersik I'd heard a lot about this film, so I was a little surprised by the overall tone, which I felt wasn't very realistic.The film follows a sub-commander-type gangster who starves under his immediate superior whilst he looks for the opportunity to prove the worth of himself and his men, as well as keep his actual family with a roof over their heads. That opportunity eventually arrives, but it leads to mistrust and dog learns to eat dog, which is about all I can say without ruining the plot.A lot of users here have commented on the acting being great - and it really is! The fights are excellent (even though most men would be dead if hit with a baseball bat repeatedly to their unprotected chest - NOT a spoiler), and the flow of the story comes naturally. Wow, what's not to love, right? Unfortunately, the film just cannot decide if it's a fanciful drama glamorising gangsters or a serious characterisation. The romance between the beautiful childhood friend and the lead lacks any kind of spark and it's not until the gangsters are scaring normal people out of their homes for the sake of their boss' stake in a housing development project that we realise they are actually supposed to be nasty people, which, until then, only seemed to be their opposition.Overall then, A Dirty Carnival is an enjoyable enough flick, but there are better gangster films in both the Asian and Western world and given that the director couldn't seem to decide in what light to make the film, it's impossible to rate it any higher.

xpf3838 No glamorous, highly classy gangster story. No sweetening of unrealistic heroic gangsters in this movie. This shows corrupt cop, a parasitic life of gangsters. Somehow, the story deeply moves your sympathy of a human tragedy.The main character is a 29 year old petty gangster who is burdened caring for an ailing mother, a brother who wants to become a gangster and his family is about to lose their home. He realizes that he cannot continue on like this. He finds himself in a web of murder and betrayal in a world where trust and mercy doesn't exist.compared other Korean gangster movies, this is one of the top 5.

darrylwad If you are looking for more in a gangster film than just violence and fights then this is the film for you.This is a very well rounded film, in addition to some good scenes of violence, murder, betrayal and fights, there is a good splaterring of humour, family drama and a small bit of romance too.The film centres around a low level gangster who through hard work and various violent acts begins to rise through the ranks.One of the major messages of the film is about trust, friendship and betrayal.The acting and directing are all very good, without the need to go over the top due to the excellent pacing of the film and a very good storyline.Very highly recommended, the time to the end credits is just shy of 2H18, but it's well worth the time for the excellent twists and turns as the film goes on.