Another Public Enemy | DVD Review

Although the original Korean title (Gonggongui jeog 2) let us believe that it’s a sequel to Woo-Suk Kang’s 2002 Public Enemy (Gonggongui jeog), this action drama isn’t a sequel by any means.

As it was the case in Woo-suk’s previous Public Enemy movie, once again the always excellent Kyung-gu Sol (best remembered to North Americans viewers as the ex-con in the powerful Korean drama Oasis) is playing the male lead character. This time he doesn’t play an insane and over-the-edge corrupt cop, but a very determined prosecutor who is newly assigned to unsolved crimes that are linked to an enigmatic and powerful foundation. He suspects the chairman of the foundation, an old nemesis of him since high school, to be the man behind the vast corruption of bribery and illegal money transfer. He’ll discover just how far this conspiracy goes.

Inferior to his previous films (the first Public Enemy and Silmido, a powerful war-period drama that he made between the two PE movies), Another Public Enemy has its own merits – a restrained but emotionally charged performance by Kyung-gu Sol and an interesting plot – but it suffers from an overlong story and a pretty slow pacing. The first twenty minutes starts with a bang with two briefs and very intense fight sequences involving dozens of extras. You imagined that you’re in for and all-out action drama but the movie quickly turns into a slow-moving investigation drama. Despite these flaws, the movie has a few decent comic scenes and some pretty effective melo parts that fits well into the story.


This DVD edition is almost identical to the same edition as the region 3 Korean version by Cinema Service. But this time, the commentary track comes with English subtitles. This moderately interesting audio track features commentary by director Woo-suk Kang and actors Kyung-gu Sol, Joon-ho Jung and Shin-il Kang. For the most part, they all comment about what is happening in the movie and the audience’s reactions toward the film or a particular scene. We also learn that they tried to be as realistic as ever, without glorifying it, in depicting the role of prosecutors working in the field of illegal activities. The best extra comes in the way of a 35-minutes making of that summarizes the entire project. It’s rather odd to see an actor like Byung-gu Sol making apologies about his performance in the film and how thankful he is to director Woo-suk for being very patient with him. There’s also a behind the scenes look at how they handle the car and motorcycle stunts.

Don’t expect and all-out action feast or even the same level of intensity and originality as the first Public Enemy. A suitable time-waster, this movie comes in this excellent DVD edition that is an improvement over the Korean region 3 edition which has the extras and commentary contains English subtitles.

Movie rating – 3

Disc Rating – 3.5