Nameless Gangster (Korea, 2012)
Directed by: Yun Jong-Bin
Starring: Choi Min-Sik, Ha Jung-Woo, Jo Jin-Woong, Ko In-Beom

A portrait of Korea in the Eighties, painted in pay-offs, stabbings, corruption, and bad blood, Nameless Gangster is, as TIME Magazine said, “The Korean mob film Scorsese would be proud of.” Like Goodfellas, it’s a pitch-perfect recreation of an era when politicians, prosectutors, and mob bosses could only be told apart if you squinted real hard at their business cards. But unlike Goodfellas, this film is a merciless condemnation of Korea itself, not just the mob life. In the Eighties, the economy was booming, the Olympics were in Seoul, the government was a military dictatorship, the gap between rich and poor was growing, and students protesting for a more equitable society ruthlessly put down. All in all, it feels a lot like America today.

But all bad things must come to an end, and NAMELESS GANGSTER begins in 1990 when newly-elected president, Roh Tae-Woo, declares war against organized crime and arrests hundreds of gangsters. An ordinary hotel-room beating goes wrong, and it results in the arrest of corpulent, cringing, politically-connected mafia man, Choi Min-Sik (Oldboy, I Saw the Devil). Once in prison, things flash back to 1982 to show where it all began. Choi is a low level customs official, going nowhere fast. He gets his hands on a shipment of heroin and manages to wrangle an introduction to local gangster, Ha Jung-Woo (The Chaser, Yellow Sea), and the two of them form a marriage of convenience that will turn them into the biggest crimelords in Busan.

But Choi isn’t a gangster, not really, and that’s where Choi shines. He’s a scared, greedy, middle-aged man who will do anything to survive. An expert manipulator of Korea’s rigid social hierarchy, knowing exactly who is older than whom, and which mobster’s father he knows from school, his greatest weapon is his little black book full of contacts. Ha Jung-Woo, on the other hand, is coolness personified, the ultimate badass gangster whose boys will die for him. As push comes to shove, and the go-go Eighties give way to the corruption-busting Nineties, these two men have to fight to survive, sacrificing their dignity, their friends, and each other as they struggle to stay on top.