Screening accompanied by an introduction.

Back in the Nineties, Cheon Myeong-kwan helped write Chang Gil-soo’s I Wish What is Forbidden To Me (1994) and Kim Ui-seok’s A Great Chinese Restaurant (1999). Although it has been over two decades between then and Cheon’s directorial debut (which he also adapted from Kim Un-su’s 2016 novel), the wait has been worth it.

This traces the simultaneous upward and downward trajectory of low-ranking gangster Park Hee-su (Jung Woo) from pawn to king of fictitious rundown port town of Kuam, despite his hopes of leaving with his long-term fiancée and her son for an even smaller, quieter life on Geoje Island. It is a noirish tale of dashed dreams, treacherous sacrifice and existential despair, revealing the pointless, soul-destroying play of power. The plotting is labyrinthine, the characters are multiple, but all is held together by Jung Woo’s performance as a man who, though the accidental protagonist, is no hero.

Anton Bitel