Action/ Crime/ Thriller
141 minutes

Released 12th March, 2008
Madman/ Eastern Eye

Director: Ha Yoo

Screenplay: Ha Yoo

Cast:  In-sung Zo
 Ho-jin Chun
 Yoon Jae-Moon
 Min Nam Koong
 Ku Jin
 Bo-young Jin

I'm easy to impress. If the marketing men can work the title of a film into the DVD blurb then, even if the film is a piece of shit, you've already won me over. A Dirty Carnival manages to make the title work in the blurb twice, so before I've even put the DVD in the player, the marketing has managed to win me over.

 The film itself is a generic gangster flick. Byung-du is a small time player in the criminal underworld of Seoul. He's out to make money using any means necessary, though mainly through extortion and loan-sharking. All the while, his employers, decked out in expensive suits, also struggle to live the high life, using their crafty criminal ways to reap in riches and appease the greediness of their bosses.

 The character's in this film tend to refer to everyone as 'boss'. Yes, boss. No, boss. Big boss. Sorry, boss. It's a whole class system for the criminal element. And as with any class system, the lower you are in the hierarchy, the more ruthless you will become in ascending it.

 There's betrayal, a love interest, the eternal conflict between staying loyal to one's family while staying loyal to one's work. But most interesting is the strange attachment to the use of a baseball bat to subdue any conflict with one's enemies. Throughout the film, fighting ensues with the hearty swing of a bat, which leads me to believe that criminals all over the world keep fit by playing baseball.

 A Dirty Carnival may tread the well-worn ground that many other gangster flicks already have, but like I said, I'm easy to impress. Asian cinema has nailed the genre of the crime film in the last ten years and this is evident in the storytelling and subtle direction of A Dirty Carnival. The film envelops the viewer in the character arcs and subplots just enough to make the film highly engrossing.

 It's just a shame that the title of the film wasn't worked into the script somewhere. If it had been, I would have been shouting at you to in CAPITALS to see this film.

3 Seoul divas out of 5