There
are two basic strategies serial killers can opt for to select their prey:
obsessive observation and stalking or pure randomness. The latter has the advantage
of following no discernible patterns for the police to trace. The downside is a
potential target like Jang Dong-su. The beefy gangster is really hard to kill
and he has an army of foot soldiers to search for his mystery assailant.
Frankly, the killer would probably be better off if the ethically ambiguous national
copper Jung Tae-seok finds him first in Lee Won-tae’s deliciously twisted The
Gangster, the Cop, the Devil, which opens this Friday in New York.
Jang
is played by the mighty Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok), so nobody in their right mind
would mess with him. Of course, that is precisely the case with the psychotic “K.”
He thinks he has the drop on Jang with his usual minor fender-bender M.O., but
it takes more than a few stabs to kill the Paul Bunyon-esque crime lord.
Initially,
Jang’s gang assumes the attack was the work of a rival faction, but he calls
off the war when he comes to. Not surprisingly, he is inclined to solve the
matter personally rather than cooperate with Jung’s investigation. However,
they forge a tentative alliance to coordinate intel and resources to track down
the killer. They start betraying and double-crossing each other almost
immediately, but they still keep returning to their basic agreement, for the
sake of preventing further murders and scoring some stone-cold payback, so,
yeah.
South
Korea has always demonstrated a clear comparative advantage when it comes to
producing serial killer thrillers, but GCD takes the genre to new
sinister heights. Lee Won-tae came up with the mother of all high concepts and
his execution barrels forward with the energy of a runaway freight train. Plus,
it is just jolly good fun to watch Don Lee and Kim Moo-yul scheme, fight, and
bicker together as Jang and Jung, respectively. Lee could very well be the only
man in the world who could credibly play Jang, who we can easily believe would
survive multiple stab wounds to the torso. Train to Busan already made
him a star, but GCD should definitely be a next-level-up movie for him.
Yet,
maybe the biggest surprise is how well Kim hangs with him. He is spectacularly
sleazy and nakedly self-serving, but we also believe he genuinely wants to stop
the murders. As K, Kim Sung-kyu is undeniably creepy and coldly clammy, but he
is somewhat overshadowed by the larger-than-life flamboyance of Lee and Kim
Moo-yul.
