Movie Review: Yadang: The Snitch

Director Hwang Byeong-guk sets the tone for Yadang: The Snitch pretty quickly, as we are introduced to Lee Kang-soo (Kang Ha-neul), a cocksure young man who is working with up-and-coming prosecutor Koo Gwan-hee (Yoo Hae-jin) as an informant. In a fast-moving sequence of frenetic scenes we are shown how their operation works, as lower level drug users or dealers are picked up by the Police, Lee uses surprising tactics to get them to name bigger targets, and then he helps fellow officers from the prosecutor’s office round them up, often to the consternation of police officer Oh Sang-jae (Park Hae-joon), whose investigations keep getting stymied by Lee’s work.

Lee wasn’t always so confident and brash however, as a flashback reveals that not long before we met him, he was working as a driver for a rideshare service. One night he is set up to take the fall for someone else’s drug charges and finds himself sentenced to prison. Inside, prosecutor Koo senses something useful in him and sets up the beginnings of their arrangement in exchange for a drastically reduced sentence and the pair form a surprisingly strong bond.

Back in the present, when a drug bust nabs the son of a powerful politician, the corruption inside the South Korean government makes itself known and Lee quickly realizes that his life is in danger, and no one can be trusted.

There is a degree of camp to the staging and performances, but it actually works to increase the punch of the darker moments. And Yadang is not afraid to get dark. I am obviously not familiar with the way South Korea’s government and criminal underworld function, but the director claims to have interviewed over 100 people associated with the country’s drug trade and police force to lend the story a sense of realism and I did come away feeling as if I learned something about a system that doesn’t feel like it would fly in the United States, despite a few similarities.

There are a few moments where it’s hard to keep track of exactly who is who, but the key players are all easy enough to follow and the entire cast deliver exactly what is needed from them. It’s the three leads along with Chae Won-bin as a young actress who becomes entangled in the whole mess who really shine however. Each of them is put through the wringer in various ways and asked to display a host of emotions, with Ha-neul in particular getting to show impressive range.

Utilizing Lee Mo-gae’s handheld cinematography, Byeong-guk is able to make the viewer feel like they are right there in the action. The screenplay by Kim Hyo-seok is able to generate a great deal of suspense as the various characters maneuver, scheme, and backstab their way towards their goals. With biting social commentary, visceral action sequences, and ever-escalating tension, Yadang is a cleverly twisty blast. ★★★★