Director: Hwang Byeng-gug
Writers: Kim Hyo-seok, Hwang Byeng-gug, Yoon Soon-yong
Stars: Kang Ha-neul, Yoo Hai-jin, Park Hae-jun
Synopsis: In drug crime circles, ‘Ya-Dang’ informants sell criminals’ info. Criminals use this to reduce sentences, while law enforcement uses it for arrests. Ya-Dang, police and prosecutors form a key triangle.
Yadang: The Snitch begins in media res, introducing us to its protagonist, Kang-su (Kim Hyo-seok), in the middle of an interrogation as he attempts to extract critical information on a drug deal being made. Kang-su is now an expert informant, or “snitch,” in extracting the most important details before intervening with prosecutor Koo Kwan-hee (Yoo Hai-jin). After being framed for a crime he didn’t commit and getting a second chance at life with the prosecutor, Kang-su seems to be at the height of his “career” of swindling people and looking immaculate while doing it.
All of this changes, though, as Kang-su becomes embroiled in a political scandal, which reveals that Cho Hoon (Ryu Kyung-soo), the son of South Korea’s top Presidential candidate, is a massive drug addict, and a video showcasing this is on the verge of getting out. With Kwan-hee being the candidate’s right-hand man, he silences Kang-su. The people surrounding him who also knew of Cho Hoon’s drug addiction, including police detective Oh Sang-jee (Park Hae-jun), and Uhm Su-jin (Chae Won-been), an actress caught in a similar drug scandal, after taking an unknown substance she thought were “vitamins” and testing positive for drugs, are also in trouble.
A few months pass, and Kang-su finally regains the strength he needs to take all of the people responsible for his downfall out, leading to a classic revenge thriller that, while not reinventing the wheel, still ends up being admirable enough for a Saturday evening watch. What sets its apart from other revenge thrillers of the sort is its incredibly precise use of swift, invisible transitions that pull us further into its world than a line of dialogue would, especially when being tasked to visualize how the character feels inside a spiderweb of corruption that keeps expanding, making it impossible for Kang-su to fully eliminate it.
This verve gives Yadang: The Snitch some formal edge that compels us to watch the film until the very end. Even if the beats are familiar and one knows that, once Kang-su teams up with Oh and Su-jin, they have more than one trick up their sleeves to bring the prosecutor’s entire corrupt operation down. In fact, the dramatic crux of the movie is its biggest weakness, despite Squid Game’s Kang Ha-neul modulating tangible comedic and dramatic registers. Sadly, the material he has to work with is fairly nonexistent, even when representing how difficult it is for an addict to quit drugs altogether.
It gets even worse when a tragic event drastically changes their mission, a telegraphed moment that would give some emotional heft to the rest of Kang-su’s desires to see the prosecutor behind bars. Yet, that shockingly violent moment is quickly brushed aside in favor of an Ocean’s Eleven-like climax that, while perfectly executed, still leaves us with a sour taste in the mouth. It also doesn’t help that the narrative is frequently jumbled, between flash-forwards and flashbacks in time in rapid succession, one can easily lose sight of what exactly director Hwang Byeng-gug wants to discuss in his 122-minute thriller.
It’s only when it reaches that aforementioned climax that one knows what Byeng-gug wanted to talk about all along, and he provides a potent anti-corruption message that hits much truer in this era. It also helps that this entire finale is slickly shot and edited, deceiving the audience to the very end until its denouement gives us the biggest smiles on our faces. No matter how corrupt the powerful may be, the people always have the last word and have the power to stand up, even if the ones on top may seem unstoppable. Spoiler alert: no one is, and if there’s anyone who will demonstrate this inextricable fact, it’s Kang-su, who will give power back to the hands of the people deciding the country’s ultimate fate, before being forced to make the wrong choice.
