Read on Mobile

"Tazza: The High Rollers" + DVD Giveaway

"Tazza: The High Rollers" + DVD Giveaway

Once, long ago, Go-ni (played byCho Seung-woo) lost a lot of his family's money. This was through the classic Korean gambling game of Flower War, which is played with Japanese hanafuda cards. Anyway, Go-ni makes the logical decision to gamble harder, eventually becoming a powerful expert in the field of gambling cheating, always looking for the next big score. Through "Tazza: The High Rollers", Go-ni chases big scores again and again and again.

In contrast to the typical morality tale of how gambling is wrong and doesn't pay, Go-ni is actually for the most part a pretty unambiguous success throughout "Tazza: The High Rollers". Sure, the guy has his setbacks. But then he just starts up again. Go-ni rather hilariously has so much money he doesn't actually know what to do with it all. The guy has to be reminded at one point to pay off his family, several years since he last made contact with them.

The main conflict comes from the personal level. Go-ni mixes business and pleasure with similarly skilled femme fatale Madam Jeong (played byKim Hye-soo), who amplifies her card shark game with explicit seduction. She becomes emotionally torn over Go-ni presumably because he's the only man she has sex with who's not old stupid and rich. Incidentally Go-ni's cheating technique is the safest presented in "Tazza: The High Rollers", since she leaves men in such a state they don't generally care about having lost money.

But again the money doesn't actually matter, which is how "Tazza: The High Rollers" ends up being an oddly mundane movie about Go-ni's questionable lifestyle choices. Even when topics like revenge and justice come up they're never particularly heated because in the world of flower war people getting their hands chopped off just seems to be business as usual. That Go-ni is consistently so blaséabout all this is, in totally, actually kind of hilarious.

While eaisest to peg as a noir "Tazza: The High Rollers" shares most of its structural similarities with classic epic Hollywood movies. There's a huge number of chapters neatly segmenting the movie into miniature story arcs over long periods of time. We appreciate very gradual character changes over time as the film finally builds to a clear climax. Which characters comes out on top is not a matter of their actually learning anything, but rather more about a consistent pattern of behavior that we have seen expressed time and again with mild variation.

Unsurprisingly this works to make "Tazza: The High Rollers" a bit of a slog, especially considering that none of the characters are especially interesting and remarkable in and of themselves. This is why writer/directorChoi Dong-hoonmakes such a point of having the movie look and sound cool rather than try to push the story as anything remotely innovative. Of course, this is by design, since in its original serial newspaper comic format, "Tazza: The High Rollers" had to focus on style rather than substance. So at least it's a successful adaptation, I guess.

Review by William Schwartz

"Tazza: The High Rollers" is directed byChoi Dong-hoonand featuresCho Seung-woo,Kim Hye-soo,Baek Yoon-sikandYoo Hae-jin.

 

Available on DVD and Blu-ray from YESASIA and Amazon

"Tazza: The High Rollers" + DVD Giveaway
DVD MY (En Sub)
"Tazza: The High Rollers" + DVD Giveaway
DVD US (En Sub)
"Tazza: The High Rollers" + DVD Giveaway
Blu-ray (Normal Edition) (En Sub)

 

Tazza: The High Rollers DVD

Source from :Hancinema