The Thieves 도둑들 Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The 2012 South Korean film starring Kim Yoon-Seok as Macao Park, Lee Jung-Jae as Popeye, Kim Hye-Soo as Pepsee, Jun Ji-Hyun as Yenicall, Kim Soo-Hyun as Zampano, Simon Yam as Chen, Kim Hae-Sook as Chewing Gum, and Angelica Lee as Julie.



Brief synopsis: A group of thieves in Korea gets an offer to aid a high-cost heist, called in by a mysterious old colleague. Unable to refuse, they head to Macau China to learn more about this pricey job and their new coworkers. But taking one of the world’s most valuable diamonds from a Chinese mafia leader is bound to get dangerously out of hand.



Not going to lie, this movie was pretty impressive! There’s a lot of action and the ensemble cast worked really well together.



We also get a surprising amount of Chinese, Cantonese, and Japanese in this film! It’s a multilingual party!




This movie has an interesting take because we start off looking at Popeye, Yenicall, Chewing Gum, and Zampano as our main characters, but as the story progresses they look less and less like our main protagonists. In fact, each member of that team finds their own misfortune out of the Hong Kong gig (even if Yenicall’s takes a while to catch up to her). Instead, our perspective of Macao Park changes as the film progresses. Macao was this mystical person that we didn’t really know how to feel about— friend or foe? I was really leaning to the “foe” side until we figured out that Macao’s disappearance had something to do with malicious behavior on Popeye’s part. It’s ever so gradual, but the protagonist shifts in our view from Popeye’s team to Macao and Pepsee. And when they take control of the story, man do they take control!

I was mildly disappointed with Kim Soo-Hyun’s role in the film because he closes out without resolution. We thought his role would be more significant but then he was only useful for three things: 1) Eye candy, 2) comedic relief (I’m totally referring to that bar scene 😂), and 3) getting the shallow Yenicall out when she was cornered. We have to assume he was caught in Hong Kong, but we never really know.



Even if Yenicall was shallow and self-centered, she still came out a lot better than many of the other characters. Her phrase “Happy ending is mine” was moreover a little inspiring. She was personally so committed to seeing herself better off that she chased after that happy ending hard core. While I admired her tenacity, I also thought “Well. Now we have to define a happy ending and therefore happiness.” When Yenicall got the diamond, she wasn’t completely happy. Maybe getting the prize wasn’t a real happy ending. But if that was no happy ending, what would have been? Why did it look like it was Macao and Pepsee who had the real happy ending?



All in all, this movie was really good and it’s still one of the highest-grossing films in Korean history, but the loose ends with Kim Soo-Hyun’s character really put a damper on my enthusiasm. 4/5 stars!