Friend is a compelling
and violent story about a group of childhood friends who
grow up together. Joon-Suk is the son of a gangster. He’s
a leader and a fierce fighter. The tall handsome Dong-Su
is Joon-Suk’s loyal sidekick. SangTaek is their smart
and innocent friend who occasionally needs to be physically
defended. They grow up loving and protecting each other,
but when high school is over, the friends take very different
paths. SangTaek ends up getting into an elite university
and lives a normal life. Joon-Suk gets addicted to drugs
and eventually becomes a powerful mafia kingpin. Dong-Su
decides to join Joon-Suk’s rival gang and rises far
up the ranks. When Dong-Su betrays his boss, people are
out to kill him. perhaps even Joon-Suk.
Gangster movies are ubiquitous in Asia and many of them
have the same underlying themes of loyalty and friendship.
If you watch enough of these gangster movies, they start
to get really repetitive. Fortunately, Friend is a box office
smash hit which actually deserved the hype. Friend was enjoyable
for many reasons. First of all, it wasn’t a typical
one dimensional gangster movie. The main characters showed
moments of vulnerability and humanity unlike in some other
gangster movies where the characters are only portrayed
as invincible tough guys. Yoo, Oh Song displays some powerful
acting talent as Joon-Suk, the philosopher/gangster. In
one brilliant scene, he plays a shivering junkie coming
down off drugs. Later on in the scene, he brillantly evokes
the audience's sympathy by sadly asking his friend to pay
for his taxi fare when he was too old to be a gangster.
You feel truly sorry for his character, and a hallmark of
a good movie is the ability to evoke viewer's emotions.
Thanks to the amazing cast, especially Yoo Oh Song, the
movie accomplishes this goal.
The script is brillant and full of interesting gangster
philosophy. In one scene, Joon-suk tells Sang Taek how to
avoid trouble: “Next time someone messes with you,
finish off the job so there’s no trouble. Either beat
him up so bad that next time he looks into your eyes he
pees in his pants, or make him a cripple, or else forgive
him and make him your ally.” Here’s another
gem from Dong-Su’s mob boss when he's trying to convince
Dong-su to join his drug ring: “Gangsters operate
in the shade, but doesn’t that make moments in the
sun much brighter? You know what loyalty is? Loyalty is
money.” No wonder boys in Korea want to grow up to
be gangsters! There are so many movies out there glorifying
the mob. After watching so many Korean gangster movies,
it seems to me like the only alternative for people who
don’t get into the top schools is to lead a life of
crime.
This movie also pays close attention to camerawork, imagery,
editing and cinematography. The scenes which take place
in the past are perfectly fitted with retro lighting. In
the opening scene, there are kids running after a smoking
truck. At times they disappear and reappear in the smoke
and we never find out why the truck is smoking, or why the
kids are running after it, but it’s a beautiful and
somewhat useless scene, unless you want to read into the
underlying symbolism of it. There’s also another great
scene where the boys are running to the movie theater in
slow motion. The clip is straight out of a music video.
Visually, the scene was really interesting, but it didn’t
add any value to the plot. It was there strictly for the
sake of aesthetics, and the movie would have been worse
without it.
Although the actual plot of Friend holds no surprises, the
acting, cinematography and strong script really make the
movie unforgettable. It’s hands down the best Korean
gangster movie I’ve seen.
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