by Joseph Davis, Contributing Writer
Some time ago, I wrote about the film Train to Busan in a BEC, a film where the passengers on a train must survive the zombie apocalypse as it breaks out around them on the Korean Peninsula. In that movie, I honestly took a liking to the character played by Ma Dong-seok, who appears as Gilgamesh in the 2021 MCU movie Eternals. While he was a major side character in that film, he nearly stole the movie from the rest of his co-stars. Thus, while looking on Tubi for a film for this month’s installment of Out of Market, I was immediately drawn into the film Akinjeon, or as it is titled in English The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil. Honestly, before pressing play I knew next to nothing about this movie outside of his appearance as one of the three leads, but by the time I was done I knew it was worth sharing.
If you’re not a fan of blood, this may not necessarily be the movie for you, but outside of that one reason, this movie is a wild ride from beginning to end. It’s a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” done in a fantastic fashion. Every single character action and choice in this movie is deliberate and portrayed in a truly fantastic way. From the charismatic gang leaders and their more aggressive second-in-command, to both altruistic and corrupt police officers, to a truly psychotic killer, there’s not a single character that in some way feels out of place, even the silly side characters who keep appearing in the movie. No one who is introduced in this movie is truly forgotten by the end of it. There are several moments in a lot of movies that feel like a thread left unpulled or attached to the wrong piece, but here not a single thread feels out of place, and characters will make a choice at one point in the film that makes you realize how they’ve grown based on moments earlier on that in many cases could have been left out. There are some moments, especially near the end, that very much feel like the rule of “show, don’t tell” is being broken, but everything around it is too good to not make up for it.
Another thing I want to discuss is how this film transitions from moment to moment. So many transitions are purely brilliant in this movie, where at one point you’re out at the scene of a crime, but then the next as you think you’re going around a pillar the shot is suddenly in a restaurant as two rival gang leaders have high-level talks about a turf war. There are oh so many moments in this one where the film cuts from storyline to storyline that can feel clunky, but the filmmakers manage to cut cleanly instead, in a way that feels downright natural. It allows them to take an already wild ride and make it all that much wilder. The people making this film know how to run their equipment, and it shows in a downright remarkable way giving each and every person in the film a spotlight exactly when it’s needed.
Finally, I have to talk about the acting in this movie. Everyone feels real, almost as if it’s not a movie, to the point where you can find someone exactly as cocky, as tough, or as terrifying as you would expect their real life counterparts to be. This area can really make or break a movie, and in this case it absolutely makes the film for me. You have the gangster who is gregarious when he needs to be, and iron fisted when he has to be. The cop is cocky, someone who you can tell is hungry to solve the case and doesn’t like the interference he is hit with. Finally, the devil is honestly one of the more frightening villains in recent memory for me, in terms of the mannerisms carried in the performance, as well as in how the actor says their lines. Every single person involved in this movie knew exactly who they were playing and played it to perfection.
While I was doing some further research into this film in terms of actors and production, I learned that apparently there is going to be an American remake of this movie, with Ma Dong-Seok to reprise his role in the film. Honestly, while I’m curious to see how it plays out, I’m also afraid how it will do, because Akinjeon has already set such a high bar that I do not feel that any remake could meet its high marks. It’s like with my earlier watching of The Vanishing some time ago, something about the setting of this movie is going to be lost by bringing it to an American setting, and I’d much rather have people check out the original than to take a chance on the remake clouding their judgement on a fun and fantastic movie.
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