MIN-Ho Woo’s 130-minute drama of high, medium and low corruption in the South Korean government, business, administration, law enforcement and high-end recreational consumption of naked bodies and addictive substances is neither gentle nor genteel.

Watching it in company with six others, clearly Korean because I could hear them following the dialogue and occasionally chuckling, I couldn’t help wondering how the South Korean Ministry of Culture, if such a body exists, views its role as an emissary for the nation’s image.

It’s well-spattered with blood and violence. Various whacking and cutting hand tools remove body parts without anti-sepsis or anaesthetic. People get killed for no better reason than that they have failed or botched assignments. They’re the lucky ones. Death’s comfort takes a long while to reach others tied to chairs and brutally beaten. Thank heavens it’s only a movie and the blood’s painted on.

An (Byung-hun Lee) has a prosthetic right hand. He lost the real one after using it to dip into the slush fund of industrialist Jang. Reporter Lee (Yun-shik Baek) and Jang are both allies and enemies. Former cop turned prosecutor Woo (Seung-woo Cho) needs a big success to advance his career.

Hyphenated (and to us, strange) names such as these get high-quality sub-titles to help Anglo viewers keep track of morally-low content and who’s who in a plot that, adapted from a cartoon strip by Tae-Ho Yoon, is devilishly complex.

Min-Ho Woo’s staging is high class. The film has a handsome appearance even in passages of gruesome content. The denouement is cynical yet optimistic. Think “Casablanca”.

At Capitol 6