The King

Park Tae-soo, from the provinces, sees that being a prosecutor is where real power sits and takes that road. He soon learns how the system works: files are not evidence but bargaining material. He rises beside his superior Han Kang-sik and enters the centre of politics. Then the government changes. Han Jae-rim wrote and directed. Jo In-sung plays Tae-soo, Jung Woo-sung plays Han Kang-sik, with Bae Sung-woo and Ryu Jun-yeol in the cast. The film tells the last thirty years of Korean political history through the prosecution service, marking each change of government directly. The telling is fast, narrated and sardonic, describing bureaucracy in the language of the gangster film. It opened in Korea just after a real political scandal and the removal of a president, and was read differently because of it. The pace drops toward the end and the message is stated too plainly. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean political thrillers and institutional criticism. Who it is not for: anyone without the context; the references rest on local politics.