So PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS opened in Korea this past weekend. It’s the third stand-alone part in the hugely successful PUBLIC ENEMY series about a corrupt cop who puts aside his hunger for a quick buck in order to take down some pillar of society or prominent citizen who really gets his goat. With a script by Jang Jin (THE KING AND THE CLOWN), the lead role played by Sol Kyung-Gu (CRUEL WINTER BLUES) and direction by the most powerful producer and director in Korea, Kang Woo-Suk (SILMIDO) it’s being viewed as the movie that will save Korea from a really bad year. Did it live up to the hype? It just opened in Korea and here’s the box office report from Variety Asia:
“PUBLIC ENEMY 3, the third installment in a series helmed by Kang Woo-suk about a righteous, but weird cop, took a boffo $8.82 million in its opening four day weekend at the South Korean B.O. Produced by Cinema Service and released by CJ Entertainment, pic locked up 1.4 million admissions at 764 crime scenes. Score is the second best arrest record this year behind INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL… And it is the first time in eleven weeks that a local picture has topped the chart. Last was GP 506. ENEMY 3 also enjoyed the biggest opening day by a Korean film this year, taking $1.2 million from over 200,000 ticket sales. That exceeded the opening day scores of this year’s biggest hits FOREVER THE MOMENT and THE CHASER.”
And what about the reviews? Here’s what folks had to say:
“The film is well crafted, with complex layers of narrative unfolding in an organic form, interjected with just the right amount of comic relief. Yet some might find this movie more disturbing than previous ones as it involves teenage crime…This may be an auspicious sign for the struggling Korean film industry, which marked a record low in May.” – The Korea Times (full review here)
We’re showing it just one time on July 3 at 6:30pm at the IFC Center and advance sale tickets are available at the link below. More reviews will be posted as they come in.
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