Public Enemy

Detective Kang is a strange card. He doesn’t lead his investigation precisely by the book and, already traditionally for South Korea, he oscillates between two seemingly incompatible genres. The Koreans usually get it right, this time too, but a little shakily. And the movie is needlessly long, especially at the beginning, however as movies from this neck of the woods tend to be, the nearer it gets to the end, the better it is. Public Enemy is an outstanding movie, just half an hour longer than it needed. (11/11/2007)

Public Enemy is a pretty solid action comedy, but the comedic side bothered me a lot. One moment the film comes across as very harsh, raw and nasty and the next it comes across as very light and funny, and that style doesn't work for me at all. But the two leads are  great, both have charisma and command respect. The action is decent but not much, we don't really get any proper fights, it's more like a slasher style, but still interesting. 70% (08/05/2014)