7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In order to let things cool down from their latest heist, Popeye and his group of thieves go to Macao on a job. But the mastermind behind this job is none other than Popeye’s old partner Macao Park, who escaped with 68kg of gold several years ago on their last job together. But his plan takes an unexpected turn when Popeye brings Pepsi, an old flame of Park's, to settle the old score. Their target is a $20 million diamond known as ‘Tear of the Sun’, kept safely away in a casino to be sold by a notorious Chinese fence. While working together to steal this fabled diamond, they all have their own agenda to keep the diamond for themselves. But who will succeed and live to see another day?
Starring: Lee Jung-jae, Kim Yoon-seok, Kim Hye-su, Oh Dal-su, Simon YamForeign | 100% |
Heist | 4% |
Crime | 2% |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Korean: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Korean: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The Thieves starts out with a fleet and funny opening sequence that is part John Woo, part Howard Hawks— and if that doesn’t pique your interest, nothing probably will. We meet an elegant young woman who is dressed fashionably in what might be termed Audrey Hepburn chic, and her dowdy, hard drinking mother, who is clad in a baseball cap and ill fitting blouse and pants. The two women enter the palatial office of a young man at which point the mother accuses the man of having “deflowered” her daughter. Evidently the young woman has brought Mom to meet her beau, and Mom seems resigned to the fact that her daughter and this man may be a “thing”, wondering now only about how much money the man might have. The mother quickly diverts the small talk to the man’s art collection, at which point the viewer is suddenly aware there’s something else going on here other than a kind of “not quite family yet” dysfunction. Mom asks the man to see some of his private holdings, at which point we get a fast and furious, Mission: Impossible left turn in the plot where it becomes apparent that the two women are in fact part of a rather well orchestrated conspiracy to liberate a priceless item from the man’s collection. It’s fast, it’s funny and it’s impeccably well staged in an over the top way that has perilous crane shots cartwheeling into each other, the young woman becoming a distaff Tom Cruise and doing all sorts of insane building leaping (and climbing) via an attached cable, and it is frankly one of the most exciting opening gambits (a deliberate word choice, considering the long ago film about thieves plotting to take a priceless item) in South Korean film history. If the rest of the film settles into a more predictable caper rut after that opening, The Thieves still offers plenty of plot twists and turns along the way that help to supplant actual action sequences to sustain the film’s forward momentum.
The Thieves is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This Red Epic shot feature boasts the generally sleek clarity of this technology, but overall the film is not quite as sharp as might be expected. While close-ups reveal abundant fine detail, midrange and wide shots are slightly softer than similarly shot features. The location footage adds to the glamour of the proceedings and several of the establishing shots boast very good sharpness. Colors are generally accurate looking, though large swaths of the film appear to have been graded in post toward the yellow side of the spectrum. Some very minor, almost negligible, aliasing in on display with regard to some of the heavily patterned cityscapes that crop up through the film.
The Thieves boasts a wonderfully immersive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix (mostly) in Korean (a recurring joke in the film has various characters speaking Mandarin, Cantonese or Japanese and then being surprised when someone else understands what they're saying). Fidelity here is very strong, with dialogue presented very cleanly and clearly and the film's ubiquitous ambient environmental effects as well as Foley work also sounding great. The film is awash in great surround activity, including nice discrete channelization and excellent panning effects. The urban setting of much of the film helps immeasurably in this regard. Despite some of the "busy" sounding mix, everything is extremely well prioritized.
The Thieves is frankly a little hard to follow at times, especially when director Dong-Hoon Choi cuts away from the main action to give us little sketches of various characters' back stories and interrelationships, but if you just go with the flow and let the film's admittedly labyrinthine plot spill out on its own terms, this is a hugely enjoyable caper film. The action set pieces are wonderfully staged and there's even some actual character development along the way, something rather unusual for a genre film such as this. Though the supplementary material here is pretty slim, the video and audio quality is great, and The Thieves comes Highly recommended.
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