If you want to see what top shelf action crime drama looks like ,The Merciless, as the title translates, is its very definition.
This is a polished, likeable, laughable but ultimately, very dark film. Its essence if you look closely, is a proxy dysfunctional father son styled relationship. The older and younger crime figures play ball, they have fun, they make jokes, hang out, rough house, conspire, collaborate, share the good and the bad.
Of course given the nature of what they are and what they do the outcome was and is, very bleak and could be nothing else. In its closing scenes there's a certain sense of the events of this film coming full circle too. Of loss and a grim kind of anti hero, rebirth.
If you like quality crime drama, with healthy amounts of action, with an adjoiner that this film is violent and occasionally sadistic, then you really can't do better than this offering from Korea. A deeply impressive effort. 10/10 from me.
