The Unjust

When a suspect in a series of child murders is shot by police, the case stalls. The pressure mounts and the force finds a solution: manufacture a culprit. The job goes to Inspector Choi, who is waiting on promotion. At the same time the prosecutor Joo pulls the investigation in another direction for his own reasons. The subject is not the murders but the bargaining between two institutions. Police, prosecutors, contractors and journalists sit at the same table and nobody is looking for the killer; everyone is looking for their share. The actual culprit is not even at the centre of the film. The form is hard and fast; Ryoo Seung-wan's fight scenes are here too, but the weight of the story is in meeting rooms. The production is counted among the harshest Korean films to go directly at institutional corruption and helped set the tone of the country's crime cinema in that period. The director said the title is plain because there was nothing else to say. Hwang Jung-min plays the prosecutor, Ryoo Seung-bum the policeman and Yoo Hai-jin the contractor. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean crime cinema and criticism of institutions. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a character to sympathise with; there is no good man in this film and the ending rescues nobody.