Usually, the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" trope feels lazy. Here, it feels necessary. The film cleverly strips away the bureaucratic red tape. The Cop cannot catch the Devil because the law is slow; the Gangster can catch the Devil because he acts outside the law, yet he needs the Cop to legitimize the capture.
In the landscape of modern South Korean cinema, few films manage to balance high-octane action with a compelling moral tug-of-war as effectively as Released in 2019 and directed by Lee Won-tae, this gritty neo-noir thriller subverts the "odd couple" trope by forcing two natural enemies into a desperate alliance to catch a force of pure chaos. the gangster the cop the devil