Paid in Blood (aka Tomb of the River) (2021)

[laagi]

[One Armed Boxer]

This hits Korean DVD on April 12th, unfortunately minus English subtitles (or a Blu-ray for that matter!) - 

[laagi]

15 hours ago, One Armed Boxer said:

This hits Korean DVD on April 12th, unfortunately minus English subtitles (or a Blu-ray for that matter!) - 

It's on iQiyi with english subtitles if I'm not mistaken. As I mentioned briefly in another thread. While the trailer may suggest a gritty gangster flick it ends up being anything but. 

Lots of hot air being thrown around mainly with the overuse of "Shibal". While the two opposite leads are great the movie never generates any excitment or thrills for its 2 hour runtime. 

My advice avoid it! Unless you're really desperate for a korean gangster flick which is big on promise but falls short in pretty much every department.

[One Armed Boxer]

For anyone that was sold by @laagi's glowing review of this one, it's showing as part of June's offerings on Well Go USA's streaming service HI-YAH! under the re-title 'Paid in Blood'.

[One Armed Boxer]

On 3/26/2022 at 7:46 AM, laagi said:

Unless you're really desperate for a korean gangster flick which is big on promise but falls short in pretty much every department.

I decided to intentionally ignore the latter half of this sentence @laagi and give this one a go. In short, you're right.  I gave it the full review treatment over at COF - 

https://cityonfire.com/paid-in-blood-aka-tomb-of-the-river-2021-review/

[Yihetuan]

This was as generic & mediocre as it gets for Korean organized crime revenge thrillers. Nothing especially noteworthy about this film at all. Jang Hyuk's portrayal of the overly ambitious psychopath brooding mob boss with his fellow Joseonjok henchmen was mildly entertaining but ultimately was just lacking any substance or gravitas.

A bit of a shame as I was looking forward to Yoo Oh Sung's performance. I don't think I've seen him in any film other than the one that brought him to renown, Friend in the last 20 years. The only other thing I've seen him in is the MV for Baby I'm Sorry from the Kpop band, My Name and he plays a similar character to a gang boss as he does in this movie but much less honorable. The MV is actually a tribute to Friend & is vastly more entertaining & dare I say even more violent onscreen than this dull movie. The fact it stars Choo Sung-hoon aka Yoshihiro Akiyama is another plus for me.

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Yihetuan

[Super Ninja]

Gotta agree with the general opinion here. Tomb of the River is your typical, by the numbers Korean gangster flick and offers pretty much nothing new to the genre. One thing that I don't remember having seen before was the idea of Lee Min-seok using his debtors to take blame for his kills. 

Plot wise and action wise, Yoon Young-bin offered nothing original with his debut and his lack of experience is obvious throughout the movie. However, if you can settle with more of the same and enjoy another portion of Korean cussing, knife stabbing and bats smashing, this will satisfy your cravings.

I couldn't confirm this sticking through the end credits, but I believe there's King Boxer playing on the TV in the background in one scene.