The Prison: Who Runs The Law?

Yes, it's preposterous. Yes, it's cynical. Yes, it's horrific. But The Prison is also incredibly, impossibly fun. By taking one penitentiary's inner workings — the guard-inmate sycophancy, the convict hierarchy, the black market trading, the perverted politics — to their most extreme possibility, Na Hyeon's screenplay is a deliriously enjoyable improbability, a twisty-turning political Rube Goldberg machine of crime, cruelty, and power-tripping. The struggle for supremacy between the sadistic old-timer convict Ik-ho (Han Suk-kyu) and the contentious ex-cop newbie Yu-gon (Kim Rae-won) is one of those gloriously gripping, cinematic pissing matches in which who might win remains unknown until the very end.

Is this a movie about corruption? Does it glamorize corruption? Even as it exposes corruption's insidious ubiquity inside South Korea's judicial system? Is it even taking a stance on corruption? Is it, perhaps, some strange adult counterpart to Na's anti-fascist kids cartoon Leafie, A Hen in the Wild? All valid theories, in my humble opinion. In fact, how you interpret this one is definitely up to you. Regardless, I'm guessing that whatever your ideological take, The Prison's final scene is going to make your head spin in that it's one of the most anti-Hollywood endings I can imagine, a bizarre restoration of karmic balance that goes against traditional movie ideas about good and bad and the "ends justify the means" philosophies. Have I got you intrigued yet? Are you thoroughly perplexed and enticed? Good. Now watch the damn movie.