The Devil’s Deal – first look review

In 2019, Kore­an direc­tor Lee Won-tae broke through glob­al­ly with The Gang­ster, the Cop, the Dev­il, a thriller that had already entered dis­cus­sions for an Eng­lish-lan­guage remake pri­or to receiv­ing an inter­na­tion­al pre­mière out of com­pe­ti­tion at Cannes. On the basis of the high con­cept premise alone, you can see why there’s been eager­ness to retell it with dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al specifics: a crime boss finds him­self team­ing up with a local detec­tive try­ing to bring him down, after the for­mer bare­ly sur­vives a vicious attack by a sus­pect­ed ser­i­al killer.

Lee’s fol­low-up, The Devil’s Deal, is anoth­er gang­ster thriller, albeit with less action genre crossover, mak­ing it less like­ly to inspire an over­seas remake. This is not a com­ment on its qual­i­ty; if any­thing, this is a more accom­plished and rich­er crime saga than its enter­tain­ing­ly blunt and slick pre­de­ces­sor. It’s more that the plot of The Devil’s Deal is so root­ed in the par­tic­u­lars of South Korea’s elec­toral pol­i­tics that there’s a less imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous way to trans­late the mate­r­i­al. That said, the notion of there being min­i­mal dif­fer­ences between politi­cians and under­world enforcers is all-too universal.

Cho Jin-woong plays Hae-woong, an assem­bly mem­ber can­di­date run­ning for office in Busan cir­ca 1992, oper­at­ing under the belief that he will have the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s back­ing for his nom­i­na­tion, thus all but ensur­ing vic­to­ry. But he’s tak­en out of the equa­tion by an influ­en­tial busi­ness­man (Lee Sung-min), who sets up the party’s sup­port of anoth­er can­di­date: one who’s more docile, so as to aid the allo­ca­tion of land to be seized up and sold.

Humil­i­at­ed, Hae-woong decides to run as an inde­pen­dent. He gains ground by steal­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments regard­ing the planned urban devel­op­ment in the area, and enlist­ing the help of the loan shark gang leader (Kim Moo-yul, the cop in Lee’s pre­vi­ous film) whose crew hound­ed him after his Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty cam­paign crashed, promis­ing size­able real estate prof­it in exchange. As he gains sub­stan­tial elec­tion momen­tum, fac­ing insur­mount­able debts if he los­es, his oppo­nents employ ille­gal and vio­lent means to try secur­ing their own victory.

It’s only a mild spoil­er to say that the mat­ter of the elec­tion itself is resolved with­in the first hour. Not to give away its result, but that Eng­lish-lan­guage title heav­i­ly fore­shad­ows that the real meat of the piece con­cerns the fall­out of sell­ing one’s soul in order to achieve pow­er and influ­ence. And the web of amoral­i­ty extends far beyond the three main play­ers men­tioned, as Hae-woong’s cam­paign deci­sions, and the sub­se­quent respons­es from his com­peti­tors, inflict irrepara­ble dam­age upon peo­ple caught in the cross­fire, from a jour­nal­ist who leaked valu­able intel to a bribed and betrayed bal­lot official.

Once again Lee incor­po­rates flash­backs as a way to recon­tex­tu­alise ear­li­er scenes. Struc­tural­ly, what could be con­sid­ered an excess of rug-pulls actu­al­ly sup­ports a chess anal­o­gy briefly men­tioned towards the begin­ning. The film is a bat­tle of wits where an osten­si­ble pawn in Hae-woong trans­forms into some­thing more pow­er­ful, so it’s only fit­ting that the rules of the nar­ra­tive chessboard’s fab­ric are in flux.