The Drug King: High on the '70s

Tarantino isn't the only director fetishizing '70s noir. Director Woo Min-ho and his cinematographer, costume designer, and music director are all channeling peak Scorsese, Schlesinger, and Penn in the sumptuously filmed, nattily attired, and impeccably scored The Drug King. The latest South Korean export helmed by acting legend Song Kang-ho, Woo's sprawling biopic concerns Lee Doo-sam, an actual cook-dealer-addict who operated on an international scale. Yet despite its lush look and sound, The Drug King avoids glamorizing its drug of choice crank by reminding us that those who get a taste of this upper will get hooked, go crazy, then crash and burn.

We see this scenario play out with Doo-sam himself naturally as well as his brother Doo-hwan (Kim Dae-Myung) and a handful of ancillary characters but really most of this cast is set dressing. The Drug King is Do-sam's story; everyone else is walking prop, an extra maybe with lines. Luckily, Song is an actor who can carry a two-hour movie alone. We may wish that actresses Kim So-jin and Bae Doona had more to do as his clear-eyed wife and his calculating mistress but Woo's script isn't concerned with anyone outside of its leading man. An ostensible plot involving a determined police detective (Lee Hee-joon) on Lee's trail is irrelevant. What works in The Drug King, and it's no small thing, is Song doing his thing — rising up to the top then sinking to a soiled bottom. You'll never look at a bucket of piss the same way again.