Has Cho Jin-woong been miscast in The Devil's Deal? I'd say so. That's too bad as I've seen him play an untrustworthy cop in The Policeman's Lineage and a wannabe Sam Spade in Bluebeard, a well-meaning mobster in My Paparotti and a singleminded detective in Believer 2. So why shouldn't he play a disenfranchised politician resorting to crime to rescue his failing career? It may be that Cho does best with a single clear objective and this part's too full of contradictions. Instead of offering a schizoid performance, he keeps avoiding the potential extremes. Whether he's matching wits with Mr. Moneybags (Lee Sung-min) or cajoling a small-time hood (Kim Mu-yeol) into loyalty, Cho is strangely out of his element yet never overwhelmed. Confusing. He's not fierce or scared or sly. He's neither completely out of control nor momentarily in total control. It likes he can't commit.
Writer-director Kim Mu-yeol's script is likely part of the problem. Kim introduces an unhappy wife (Son Yeo-eun) then gives her nothing to do; starts a subplot with a reporter (Park Se-jin) only to have her disappeared; roughs up a doublecrosser (Kim Min-jae) without having him spill the beans. He neither allows Cho's aspiring assemblyman to outsmart the bigwigs nor to land in a Kafkaesque hellscape. Indeed The Devil's Deal can't figure out how to get its protagonist out of one unsuspenseful middleground. Here's an amoral guy with neither exceptional smarts nor an intoxicating drive. Will he win or lose? And what does winning mean when you were never a serious contender?
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