I'm a huge fan of director Kang Woo Suk and his films such as 'Two Cops' and 'Silmido'. The 'Public Enemy' series is unique in the fact that South Korean films rarely have a franchise because even if the first film is a hit, the second and third films flop.(for example, My Wife is a Gangster and Hi Dharma.) 'Public Enemy3'is more of a direct sequel to the first movie(because in the second one, the main character's job and history is all changed), and it was okay, but not great like the first one.
The film follows the story of our hero Kang Chul Joong(Seol Kyong Gu, who is brilliant as usual), who is sick of being a cop because the job is dangerous and pays almost nothing, not to mention his credit is way down so he can't even get a loan from the bank. He decides to quit until his old boss(Kang Shil Il, who participated in this movie despite the fact that he has cancer)calls him up for one last investigation. A high school student who murdered a local businessman was found dead in his school. As detective Kang investigates more closely, he finds out that the mastermind is Lee Won Sool(Jeong Jae Young), president of Geo Seong Enterprises, which on the outside is a regular corporation owning restaurants, construction firms and night clubs but on the inside, trains top fighting high school students to be ruthless gangsters. As Kang delves deeper into the case, Won Sool hatches a plan to stop both Kang and the case for good..........
The best thing about this movie is that it points out the problems of teenagers in society, who think that it's just cool to fight and beat up innocent people. It shows us that being a gangster isn't cool, it's like digging your own grave. The problem is the comic parts. I understand that director Kang Woo Suk called this movie 'a mixture from the previous Public Enemy films with his early movies like TwoCops', but comedy just doesn't work with a thriller like this with such a serious topic. People might just ignore the message this movie is trying to send because there are just too many funny parts. I give this movie 8 stars because on the whole, I enjoyed it and hope for another Public Enemy film in the years to come, but I hope if another sequel does come out, director Kang returns to the more serious version of the first and second Public Enemy films.
