Among the greater wastes of time this movie season turned out to be Dirty Money, a Korean police procedural which played like, pretty much, every other police procedural I’ve ever seen, including a few Korean ones. More unfortunately, because the film is Korean I recognized zero actors in it, which made it resonate even less than it would have otherwise.
What’s the simile? Sometimes writing reviews is like pulling teeth. Yes, that’s it. Except this time, I don’t even know who’s teeth I’m pulling.
Myung-deuk (Jung Woo) and Dong-hyeok (Kim Dae-myung) are detectives. And they’re both dirty. Like with dirty money. Seriously, they’re both taking bribes, Myung-deuk to cover medical bills for a child -well, you should have thought of that when decided to have children :P- Dong-hyeok
because his partner is a failed gambler … and continues to fail at gambling.
Early on, there’s murder, because of course, and there’s a MacGuffin in the form of a computer chip hidden on the dead guy because the genuine bad guys suck at their job. BUT, the bad guys have nicer clothes, including this one dude who shows up places in a snazzy red suit.
Geez, I hope I’m thinking of the right film.
Look, this is embarrassing; I’m going to end this now.
The flogblog boasts 3,000+ reviews. They can’t all be winners. This is definitely among the “also rans.” It’s possible I slept through Act II. If you showed this film to me again, I’m not 100% sure I’d recognize that I’d seen it already. I don’t think it was a terrible film, but that’s just about the least enthusiastic recommendation as I’ve ever given.
There once was a cop on the take
With each bust, he’d skim a little cake
Internal came to call
But couldn’t bust a ball
As he’s hardly unique, for heaven sake
Not Rated, 100 Minutes
Director: Kim Min-su
Writer: Kim Min-su, Hwang Eun-sung
Genre: Korean gangsta
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: You gotta really be into dirty cop stuff
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anyone who can’t remember this film a week later … i.e. me
