User Reviews

Good stuff baby! Homicide Detective JANG and Chief Inspector OH are hot on the trail of the ever elusive and seemingly untouchable Gangster boss YU.

Now Jang is like a thug himself beating out confessions and going on vigilante rampages but the man is on a mission of revenge. Inspector OH , on the other hand is your clean cut, by the book career cop trying to make the world a better place by fighting organized crime. Extenuating circumstances bring the two together because they are after the same people essentially in Boss YU and his crime family.

Boss YU is not one to be trifled with as he is major connected in legitimate and illegitimate ways to the top of the food chain in the gangster and political scene. He is like the Zen Master Gangster who is adept at the Art of War. He is always pulling something out to escape the clutches of his foes and those who are against him or stand in his way always face death or double cross.

The tension is high and the pace never relents. Each scene plays out like a chess game that is opening up as the story unfolds revealing bits and pieces of a murderous game. The acting is superb if you like intensity and the quality of production is impressive to say the least. The characters are definitely attention getting. The tension between the three main players just burns with each pursuing a destiny that consumes them.

This is definitely one of the best cop dramas I've seen in a long time, and a film that has a lot more going for it than a mere justification of violence that many people seem to see in it. Let's first start with the main character: another reviewer said he is macho (I don't know if he talked about the film in general or the main character Jang Do-Young played by Sang-woo Kwone): I tend to agree, but I would say that he is macho in a good way: neither is he misogynous/homophobic nor is he a Charles Bronson-vigilante type, dispensing justice at random. No, our hero is a man with balls of steel who won't hesitate to take on an entire criminal organization on his own. Well, actually he won't be alone, since, and no spoiler here, since this is the basic plot outline, he will be helped in this task by another cop of completely opposite temper, played by Ji-tae Yu. What I liked in 'Ya-soo', is that is is above all a film driven by FEELINGS: instead of opting for a cerebral approach like, for instance, Chan-Wook Park in his three films about vengeance, or a more philosophical one, like Ji-woon Kim in 'A Bittersweet Life', the director opts for an 'stripped-bare-emotions' approach, which can be qualified as melodramatic, and it is true that drama overwhelms the film, but it worked for me, and I think it was a wise choice from the director to try to explore the issues taken on in 'Ya-soo', that is to say, mainly deficiencies of the judicial system and political corruption this way, instead of copying the work of other film makers. What we have here is the direct, raw impact of an extremely unfair situation and the direct, raw response of the two main characters to the aforementioned situation, and in this context, the amount of action and violence of 'Ya-soo' is perfectly understandable. However, I think that the director is intelligent enough to inter cut this very fast-paced ride with moments when we get to know the main characters feelings and motivations, and to some extent, to SHARE them. In this respect, both KSW and JTY acted very well and managed to convey their emotions to the viewer. As for me, I was finally deeply moved by the film, and I think that this was also the primary intention of 'Ya-soo', this is a film intended to make the viewer FEEL. What a ride!!! As the tag lines suggested it on the title page for this film on this website, this film will definitely remain in my heart.

Warning spoiler. Acting in this is absolutely superb. I was in thralled right up to the ending. I don't know what type of bullets the Korean place used to bring a suspect down however the ending was so abrupt from a high intensity of action to a surprise appearance of the hero who we presumed dead, grave stone and all some miraculous recovery from an onslaught of high-powered rifles. It just didn't make any sense.