‘Night in Paradise’ Review: A Gangster Film that Relies Too Much on Shock Value

This review contains spoilers.

“Night in Paradise” is quite the misleading title for director Park Hoon-jung’s (“The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion”, “New World”) latest gruesome Korean gangster film. Many of the scenes, featuring both blood-soaked gang fights and mukbang-level meals, occur during the day and definitely do not depict paradise, even if the film is set in one of Earth’s closest approximations of heaven, Jeju Island. Despite the masterful cinematography that elegantly captures the irony between the serene ocean view setting and the violent, gory shootouts, “Night in Paradise” scrambles to rely on its ghastly shock value to tell an otherwise dull story of Korean mobsters.

To put it simply, “Night in Paradise” is not for the faint of heart. Even before the title card flashes on screen 18 minutes into the movie, the protagonist, mobster Tae-goo (Um Tae-goo), witnesses the murder of his sister and niece in a staged car accident; he then goes on a rampage, while naked in a sauna, to exact revenge on the enemy Bukseong gang’s leader who was supposedly behind this heinous order. In a gory and efficient manner that feels almost too easy, Tae-goo gets the job done with just one knife. He is then sent off to Jeju Island by his boss, Gang Boss Yang (Park Ho-san), to wait things out while the gang world cools down. In Jeju, Tae-goo hunkers down with stone-faced sharpshooter Jae-yeon (Jeon Yeo-been) and her uncle (Lee Ki-young) who is an arms dealer with his own history of involvement with gangs.

Meanwhile back on the mainland, Yang attempts a power-grabbing move into the Bukseong gang’s territory, but all goes terribly wrong. Yang finds himself at the mercy of Executive Ma (Cha Seung-won), the new de facto leader of the Bukseong gang, and in an attempt to save his own skin, Yang sells out his own gang, including Tae-goo. What follows is a typical, easily-predictable gangster narrative of hunt, escape, sacrifice, and betrayal. A predictable storyline does not necessarily mean that the film is bad, especially if it is well-executed to make the old feel fresh and new. However, “Night in Paradise” fails to develop the storyline into something original and instead relies heavily on shock value of overdrawn and overly barbaric fight scenes that leave the audience wanting to avert their eyes. For example, in one scene, Tae-goo gets beat to the point where his face is almost unidentifiable for five minutes.

Another flaw of this film is the lack of meaningful character development, especially for the only main female character, Jae-yeon. This is especially disappointing considering that in Park Hoon-jung’s previous work, “The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion,” he created such a complex, multi-layered antihero in its female lead, Ja-yoon — a rarity, considering Korean cinema’s inclinations toward exclusively male “badass” characters. In “Night in Paradise,” Jae-yeon is the attempt at a “badass” girlboss with her freakishly accurate shooting skills and dry, cynical humor, managing to hold her own against gangsters despite being terminally ill. But the potential of developing Jae-yeon’s own storyline of finding justice for her family’s murder at the hands of gangsters (another plotline that is never truly explained) gets overshadowed by an awkward effort at a potential love story between Tae-goo and Jae-yeon. Jae-yeon’s character simply becomes a plot device, a damsel in distress, when she is captured by Ma and Yang in order to force Tae-goo’s hand and move along the male-dominated gangster plotline. The few opportunities that Jae-yeon is given to show complex morals is when she has a gun in her hand. The final scene is Yeo-been mauling down all the enemies who killed Tae-goo, after which she puts the gun against her head again and the film ends with the echoes of the gunshot. There is nothing poetic nor “badass” about Jae-yeon’s character in the end.

Despite all these shortcomings, “Night in Paradise” does have its good moments. The actors — especially Jeon Yeo-been, who plays cynical, take-no-shit Jae-yeon — deliver a strong performance to inject energy into the movie. Jeon Yeo-been and Um Tae-goo’s bonding scene of eating mulhoe, Korean spicy raw fish soup, and Park Ho-san and Cha Seung-won’s tense negotiation scene of eating jajangmyeon, Korean black bean noodles, both deserve awards for the incredible mukbang.

Unfortunately, the overall pace of “Night in Paradise” felt like a teenage driver learning to use the brakes for the first time: The sudden bursts of unnecessary violence and random plot devices give a jerky feel that takes away from the strengths of the movie and leaves the audience feeling a bit nauseous.