Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Believer Blu-ray Movie Review

Drug War 2.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 29, 2018

There’s a framing device of sorts that bookends Believer, a viscerally energetic Korean film about illicit drug activity, one that almost looks like an outtake from the oddly watchable old series Ice Road Truckers. A man we later find out is narcotics detective Won-ho (Cho Jo-woong) is driving through a bitterly cold snowy environment that could well have been a location for the A&E series, though after an introductory look at the frozen wilderness, the film opts for a warmer climate until it returns to icier conditions for its final scene. As treacherous as the environment seems to be in these sequences, it’s actually the nefarious activities of drug dealers that provides most of the danger in Believer, which is a kinda sorta remake of the Chinese actioner Drug War, a film which kind of ironically I started my review of by mentioning the perceived unknowability of some Asian cultures, including Korea (North, in that instance). In fact it wasn’t until I visited the IMDb to check specs on the film that I even realized Believer was in a fact a remake, since, while both films deals with the vagaries of underground drug activity, there are structural artifices that separate the two, including a rather major one that will be detailed below which sets this film apart from the earlier entry.

While both Drug War and Believer ultimately deal with a kind of precarious partnership forged between a cop and an “is he or isn’t he?” maybe bad guy, Believer kind of backs into this plot element kind of discursively, including that aforementioned opening conceit of a car driving through a frozen wasteland. And in fact the first couple of urban scenes in Believer tend to only hint at what will become the major plot element, finding an elusive drug kingpin named Mr. Lee. The first urban sequence finds Won-ho snarfing down a hamburger at a fast food emporium where a bunch of kids nearby start catcalling a young “working girl” named Soo-jung (Keum Sae-rok) who enters the place and who it’s quickly revealed is some kind of informant and/or go between for Won-ho. Won-ho enlists her aid in getting to the enigmatic Mr. Lee, whom no one has ever seen and is therefore unknown in terms of actual identity, but her efforts end in disaster. Shortly thereafter, the second sequence documents an explosion that takes place just as a well heeled older woman named Oh Yeon-ok (Kim Sung-ryung) arrives there. While the CGI documenting the conflagration is actually just a little funny, the upshot is that Oh survives the maelstrom, and hightails it to the Narcotics Squad, where she reveals she’s an acolyte of Mr. Lee’s (though she’s never met him), and the explosion was meant to kill her and the rest of Mr. Lee’s henchmen and/or women. She’s now ready to cooperate with the police, if, that is, they give in her to brazen demands for safety and even some creature comforts.

It’s with regard to the remains of the building where the explosion took place that the partnership is finally introduced. While virtually all the people inside the building were decimated in the catastrophe, a young man named Rak (Ryu Jun-yeol), along with a dog who it turns out has a connection to the young man, have survived. Both are badly wounded (the dog more so than the man), but Rak is unharmed enough to agree rather readily to going undercover to help find Mr. Lee since one of the victims of the explosion was Rak’s mother. That sets into motion a really tense series of interchanges where both Rak and Won-ho attempt to infiltrate Mr. Lee’s inner circle, with a number of almost David Lynch-ian characters showing up, including a lunatic kind of hilariously named Brian (Cha Seung-won), and two deaf mute drug "cookers" who look like they've wandered in from an ASL (Asian Sign Language?) episode of Breaking Bad. Without posting any outright spoilers, suffice it to say identities are somewhat malleable in the film, with Won-ho having to engage in some serious subterfuge at one point.

Unfortunately, Believer can’t quite elide and/or misdirect enough to seriously impair what is going to be an obvious “twist” for many perspicacious viewers in terms of who is whom and what Rak’s position in the whole hierarchy is. That said, the film is kind of intriguingly ambiguous in its climax, with a fantastically orchestrated drone shot pulling away from a showdown where the outcome is up for debate. Let’s just say that if there’s a sequel to Believer, it could be either of two characters who ends up anchoring the follow up, with the other one no longer among the living.

Believer Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Believer is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Believer's credits are entirely in (untranslated) Korean, which is one reason I initially didn't realize the film was a remake of Drug War, but there's an Alexa logo among many logos in the final crawl, and the IMDb lists various Arri Alexa models as having digitally captured the imagery, with everything being finished at a 2K DI. While the film kind of predictably plays out with gradings skewed almost uniformly toward cooler blues and slate grays, detail levels are consistently pretty impressive throughout this presentation. Certain stylistic conceits are on hand from time to time, including some quasi-hallucinatory moments (see screenshots 9 and 11), and detail levels understandably aren't quite as sharp and precise looking in those moments as in the bulk of the transfer. Fine detail in close-ups is routinely excellent, including some kind of ghastly looking wounds that accrue on various characters. The film offers some surprisingly scenic outdoor material where depth of field is also commendable. As in many Alexa shot features, I found some of the dimly lit material a bit lacking in detail and shadow definition, especially considering the fact that so much of the film is graded toward blue and characters are often wearing that hue or blacks (see screenshot 19).

Believer Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Believer features an extremely aggressive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in the original Korean which actually provoked a startle response in me (a fairly rare occurrence) in the forceful LFE that accompanies that explosion where Oh's life is almost taken. There are a number of other bombastic moments in the film, but what continually impresses in this track is the sheer glut of surround activity in terms of both outdoor environmental effects and the indoor clamor of some crowded scenes. Dynamic range is extremely wide throughout this presentation, varying from some whisper quiet dialogue scenes to over the top action moments that offer a lot of effects activity. Fidelity is excellent throughout, and dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly.

Believer Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:43)

As tends to be the case with most Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, this disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those other trailers also play automatically at disc boot up.

Believer Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Believer may be a bit repetitive and it never really wants to delve too far beneath the surface of its characters, but it's viscerally exciting a lot of the time, with a generally brisk pace and some really outré characters who may appeal to those who like their villains on the eccentric side. Technical merits are first rate, though Well Go USA tends to give short shrift to supplements. Recommended.