Choi Min-sik (Oldboy, Nameless Gangster) stars as a gruff police captain who sends an agent (Lee Jeong-jae, The Thieves) undercover into the country's biggest crime syndicate. However, he soon finds himself with split loyalties when the gang's number two (Hwang Jeong-min, A Bittersweet Life) takes a shine to him.
New World is directed by Park Hoon-jeong, who is signing his second feature following the period wartime chamber piece The Showdown. However, Park is better known as the writer behind Ryoo Seung-wan's The Unjust and Kim Jee-woon's I Saw the Devil. While The Showdown was not an excellent feature, it nonetheless evidenced a strong director's touch, something we see less and less in Korean cinema these days. By all accounts his latest is a big step up and will likely compete with last year's Nameless Gangster as one of the best Korean gang films of recent years.
The film bows in Korea next week and Well Go USA have revealed that they will release it in 15 stateside locations starting March 22.