Dirty Carnival

Saw Dirty Carnival, a Korean gangster film. It was interesting. The protagonist is a low-level gangster looking for better things. He has a sickly mother, a wannabe-gangster brother and an adorable little sister who has 'collateral damage' written all over her. The film involves two betrayals that mirror each other and also involves a filmmaker who is a childhood friend of the protagonist. He keeps prying for information about mob life and hungrily records conversations. Eventually the filmmaker makes a film based on the protagonist's adventures, featuring the recreation of a high-profile murder. The clear implication is that that film is this film which implies in turn that the director has based this film on a real-life crime, an implication which is not backed up (by imdb at any rate.) This is a fiction by implication, underlined (rather heavy-handedly I thought) by a closing repetition of an early scene. The protagonist turns to the camera and says "hey [filmmaker dude], make it a real gangster film, huh?" Dumb little scene, but neat high-wire act.

High-wire self-reference aside, the rest of the film is well executed. The protagonist has an un-gangster-ish, pretty face and both repulses and attracts our sympathy with his actions. One moment he's strong-arming a family into paying their protection money and the next he's singing along to a goofy pop song on the drive home. He's an interesting, complex character, as are many others. The mob-boss is not an emotionless block as mob-bosses usually are, but has feelings and sensitivities as well. This is not full-blown sympathization, mind you, just nuance. Anyway an interesting film.