I had high hopes from the opening of Kangryeok., with it’s slick introduction and high octane chase with a cop after a murderer, with the cop leaving his girlfriend to go home on her own in the fray, flashes of how the crime happened. It was all going so well. It could have been excellent dectective work, or something a bit more supernatural.

As it turns out it’s the former, but those flashes of deduction and how the events take place don’t apply to the rest of the criminals. If anything the opening 10 minutes of the film is a clever way to draw in the audience. You see after that opening 10 minutes, we don’t get to see anymore slick presentation, nor do we see any more chasing per se.

We’re introduced to a few new characters, one of which is a girl who’s moved from department to department when all she wants to do is catch criminals. There’s a drug baron of sorts that pulls the strings in the district who the cops want to bust. It’s unspectacular and all too familiar, with films like Wild Card having already done average action, along comes Kangryeok to prove it can be even more average.

There’s little point in going over the story, but there is this drug baron type guy. He wears pink a lot, and lap dances for polar bears. This isn’t actually true, but if it was, I promise you it wouldn’t be a let down of a film. There would be no flashy opening and then moments of boredom. It would be lap dancing in front of polar bears and nothing more. Well, maybe some leopards doing something with a pole. What that is, I leave to your imagination.

The lead is also having problems with his girlfriend, as she hates him being a cop, getting slashed and then beaten up. On top of that there’s a cop who keeps forgetting where he’s placed his things, at one point this is a serious matter, but you just bloody know what would happen from the off. Those polar bears aren’t looking so bad now are they?

Kangryeok main problem is that of being a tired and worn out formula. Had it been around 10 years ago it might have raised an eyebrow of interest. As it stands, it’s a modern film with old ideas that simply fit the average mould. It can’t break out of it, even with the film being Korean and injecting some much needed humour. Had they focused on the lead’s ability to read criminals it might have made things more interesting, but even this aspect is dumped.

Visually, the film is nothing special, offering the same old slums, clean and clear direction, it’s just very laboured. The cinematography is only partially interesting in, you guessed it, the opening ten minutes. After that we get the same bloody shots you’ve seen in about a dozen action films of that small office where they all work and whine.

The bad guy is something you could pick out of a dozen or so action films, and if anything the film starts to verge towards the Hollywood style obvious baddie.

I hate having had to sit through this mediocre crap. The worst bit of the film for me was when the violins started playing, and the lead starts to give a speech about how hard it is being a cop. If real cops did this, with violin music, they could sell tickets and call it Copera – being a cop crossed with opera. Hey, it’s a thought. Anyway, that really drove me up the wall and grinded my teeth as I watched the rest of the film fall down into the pits of hell, joining Wild Card, only to get kicked even further down.

Will you like Kangryeok? Only if you haven’t seen crap before, because this certainly is crap. If you want to try it, by all means, but prepare to place a pillow on the wall before smashing your head against it, as I didn’t do and ended up hurting myself. The violins wouldn’t stop, they wouldn’t stop dammit!

Verdict: Terrible, average and painful to watch. Discard before use