Detective Kang Chul-Choong (Sol Kyung-gu) is a tough, hotheaded cop. He is also as corrupt as they come. He never makes an arrest because he'd sooner take a bribe. But when an internal affairs investigation threatens, Kang's older and more circumspect partner, Song Haeng-gi (Kim Ju-bong), commits suicide, leaving Kang slightly unhinged. Cho Gyu-hwan (Seung-jae Lee of Attack the Gas Station!) is a wealthy fund manager and family man who also has a problem controlling his temper. Cho gets angry when his elderly father calls in a loan in order to help a struggling orphanage. Cho has the money invested in a can't-miss stock, and will lose millions if he pays his father back, so one rainy night, while Kang is nearby on a stakeout, Cho brutally murders his parents. While making his escape, wearing a hooded raincoat, Cho has his first encounter with Kang. He literally bumps into him on the street, and when Kang upbraids him for it, Cho, not realizing Kang is a cop, slashes Kang's face. When Kang hears about the vicious double murder, he realizes that he was attacked by the killer, and joins the investigation. Suddenly, police work isn't about the money any more for Kang. Kang didn't get a good look at Cho that night. But after questioning the vain, supercilious young man, Kang immediately suspects him. Cho uses his powerful connections in the police department to thwart Kang's efforts, but Kang is determined to deliver his own unique brand of justice, no matter what the cost. Gongongeui Jeok (Public Enemy) was directed by Kang Woo-Suk and was shown at the 2002 New York Korean Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
is neutral about it.
Kang Woo-Suk's Gongongeui Jeok (Public Enemy) is a tense and gritty Korean policer laced with dark humor. Entertainingly off-kilter and occasionally silly, it is basically a showdown between a brutally corrupt detective, Kang (Sol Kyung-gu), and an arrogant, wealthy sociopath, Cho Gyu-hwan (Seung-jae Lee). The film, with its raging cop antihero engaged in a ruthless cat-and-mouse with a madman, has been compared to
Don Siegel's
Dirty Harry, and while the comparison is valid, Gongongeui Jeok's cop is a lot dirtier. While Eastwood's Harry Callahan bent the rules to suit his own sense of justice, Kang breaks rules and heads to satisfy more primal urges. It's clear that if Cho hadn't had the bad luck to run into Kang while fleeing the crime scene and the overconfidence to attack the surly cop, Kang wouldn't even have taken an interest in the case. Seung-jae Lee is coolly effective as the well-groomed coiled snake villain, but he's overshadowed by Sol Kyung-gu's bravura performance as the scruffy, all-nonsense cop. There's never a question of Kang's competence. An amusing sequence shows that when his superiors demand he make an arrest (instead of letting the criminal go, minus his cash), Kang brings someone in quickly, even if it is just the most conveniently available crook in the neighborhood, whom Kang beats into confessing to a crime he's not responsible for. Despite its amusing outrageousness and well-choreographed mayhem, the film never transcends the genre the way
Dirty Harry did. It's still pretty much a formula cop drama. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide