A large truck barrels down an empty street and crashes into a passing car. This single incident throws the inner workings of the Goldmoon crime syndicate into chaos, since the powerful boss of the group had been sitting in the car’s back seat. Hierarchies and power relations which had formerly been stable are now suddenly in flux. A conflict seems likely between the gang’s unpredictable #2 figure Chung (Hwang Jeong-min) and the smoother, highly ambitious #3 figure Joong-gu (Park Seong-woong) .
But unbeknownst to the higher ranking members of the gang, the local police force is also gathering information from the inside, and using it to further their own ends. Chung’s most trusted subordinate Ja-sung (Lee Jung-jae) is actually an undercover cop, who has successfully infiltrated himself into the gang and earned their trust. After eight years of nail-biting tension, and with a baby on the way, he is now anxious to extract himself from the gang and retire. But his handler Chief Kang (Choi Min-sik) wants him to stay on, and is willing to play hardball in order to keep him in line.
Korea has no shortage of gangster movies. There are gangster comedies, gangster romances, gangster coming-of-age dramas, gangster horror, and run-of-the-mill gangster films about well-intentioned young men who get pulled into crime and end up in the midst of ugly gang battles. Despite the diverse settings and variations in tone that you see among this group of films, they are all essentially melodramatic in the sense that we are made to identify with one or two victim-heroes who are up against forces much stronger than they are. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but in the course of fighting their struggle, their inner goodness or sense of honor is revealed to the audience.
Park Hoon-jung’s New World does not depart entirely from this formula, in the sense that we do empathize deeply with the plight of the embedded police officer played by Lee Jung-jae. But Park’s approach is more expansive that of most other Korean gangster films. Ultimately he is less focused on the psychology of his main characters, and more concerned with exploring the structures and mechanisms of power within the gang. He describes it as a film about “gangsters doing politics,” and that is essentially what his characters must do in order to maintain their grip on power. The cat and mouse game played with the local police force only adds another layer of complexity to the narrative.
Korean viewers, who pushed the film’s box office score to an impressive 4 million+ admissions, were particularly enthused by the performances of the lead actors. Oldboy lead Choi Min-sik has enjoyed a career revival of late, with his appearances in I Saw the Devil and Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (2012). In New World he gives a layered portrayal of Chief Kang, whose strong motivation to bring the criminals to justice leads him to treat his subordinates unfairly. Hwang Jeong-min, for his part, is both repellent and charismatic as the impulsive and extroverted Chung. Finally Lee Jung-jae is very effective at expressing the anguish and panic his character feels but desperately tries to keep hidden from view. Although an acting veteran of some 20 years, his performance in this film caused many viewers to look upon him with new eyes.
Although some have criticized New World’s resemblance to Infernal Affairs and The Godfather (a film that the director claims to have watched more than 100 times), this film represents something new for Korean cinema. A sequel is also likely to emerge in the coming years, given that the original screenplay contained vastly more material than could fit into one feature film. It would be an exaggeration to call this film the Korean Godfather, but it leaves a pretty strong impact, and I for one would be quite interested in watching New World 2.