it reminded me most of the departed, and yes the ending felt so easily plagiarized. Although i didn't realize the homoerotic undertone until you mentioned it. now that i think about it, there were clues of this everywhere.
I thought that Lee ja-Sung was the least likable character in the movie. He moped about, complained all the time, and it certainly was a surprise to me that he was able to turn the tables so easily.
Yea, i would give it a 7/10 too. But since The Departed is a remake of the korean made Infernal Affairs. this felt so much like a knockoff of a knockoff. I always expect to be wowed by well rated SKorean movies and this just didn't do it for me.
Oh well, not all Asian countries are the same! Infernal Affairs is a Hong Kong film.
That said, I don't think Ja-sung is the least likeable of the three. Not to criticize you, but that's the way I and many audiences understood. We all know who the screenplay wants us to like, that would be Chung easily, but the movie focuses a lot on how $hitty a situation Lee is in. One that gets disliked to many is the lieutenant (played by the great Choi Min-sik of Oldboy) since he risks Ja-sung's life and never lets him go, paving way to the eventual betrayal.
Hence the homoerotic rave from certain audiences I guess, movie makes the two lead likeable and understood while relatively villifying the remaining one. Actually, the actor that played Ja-sung, Lee Jung-jae, totally rejuvinated his career after this film. He was a handsome and iconic actor of late 90s and early 2000s, went silent for several years, came back in Choi Dong-hoon's blockbuster film
Thieves (2012) just to play a puny and disloyal thief, and then
New World suddenly put him back to the coolness of his best days. So people liked him, oh yeah.
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One question I have to everyone. Well last time it seemed like my claims on the form of
Upstream Color spiked the difficulty bar too much, which makes me a little careful this time, but let's just go ahead. Anybody felt distracted by heavy use of close-up? This was something that many reviewers pointed out in a carefully positive note. Usually the good dialogue scene moves back and forth to grab the whole space and objects, catching certain details with effective close-ups from time to time. But lots of films just heavily rely on close-ups when they shoot and edit dialogue scenes, to a level that the sequence turns into a whole bunch of talking head.
Now, New World uses A LOT of close-ups, and it rarely moves back. Most of the shots in this film are big ones (extreme long/long shots) or small ones (close-up on actors' face), and there are very few mid-sized shots that give us the whole picture in certain sequences. It should be negative, but it doesn't. It induces slight headache combined with 150 minutes of running time, but I felt that somehow it worked without in-between sized shots. So, did you guys notice the high count of close-ups? If so, what do you feel about it?