TAZZA: ONE EYED JACK Review: A Brutalizing Allegory On Learning From Your Mistakes And Playing Your Cards Perfectly
A collective world of cardsharps, lonesharks, gangsters and fools looking to win at all costs, Tazza is a multimedia franchise that has certainly earned its place in history. That accolade now shares space with number three on the feature film end of things with Tazza: One Eyed Jack from director Kwon Oh-kwang, offsetting another multilayered crime tale where survival, much like deception, is the name of the game.
A cornered man hangs atop from the ledge of a building before a gang of shadowy men step to his feet, seconds before he falls to his death. Fast forward to twenty years later – present day – where Do Il-chul (Park Jung-min), a man with a worthwhile knack for reading others in a game of cards, lives with his mother who also runs a humble diner.
A chance meeting with a mysterious woman, an accident with a bellicose man and a sense of daring ambition drive Il-chul to make a terrible mistake when he challenges the aforementioned man to a game of cards. He loses to the man and is up to six figures in debt when he’s cornered on a rooftop by two goons only to be resuced by, Aekku (Ryoo Seung-bum), a shaggy, long-haired man who stakes him, revealing himself as the infamous One-Eyed Jack to establish clout.
The incident brings about a revelation regarding Il-chul’s father that compels him to stay under Aekku’s wing. Despite warnings to leave the life behind, Il-Chul tenaciously convinces him of his talent, and the two embark on a mission with the help of a ragtag team of swindlers and thieves – Kkachi (Lee Kwang-soo), Young-Mi (Lim Ji-yeon) and Kwon (Kwon Hae-hyo) – each skilled in their own way.
Hatching a plan to take down a sniveling property owner for a chance to win millions, everything goes according to plan once the charade commences, until the mysterious woman from earlier, Madonna (Choi Yu-Hwa) arrives. What ensues is an act that brings Il-chul just a little closer to the truth about his father’s death. It also compromises his team, leaving at least one casuality when a captured member’s life is spared.
There’s plenty of waxing philosophocal throughout Tazza: One Eyed Jack, reflecting on the twisted, ironic ins-and-outs of gambling, what it is and what it can do to your soul if you don’t know when enough is enough. These sorts of tropes often recur in gambling and heist films, though it’s fair to elude what helps is having a good story to tell, and a nimble way of telling it.
Similarly, it also shares characteristics with other gambling films involving protagonists whose competitive nature so often find them mixed in with criminals who don’t necessarily gamble for the thrill of the game. Actor Yoon Je-Moon’s role, in the same fashion, plays a character Il-chul doesn’t see coming, serving as the key turning point of the film before all the other chips fall where they may.
For the two hour+ duration, Kwon’s third feature induction into the Tazza franchise tells a dexterous and smart story loaded with moving pieces. The members of Aekku’s team apart from Il-chul bring chemistry and levity to their roles with Lee Kwang-soo and Lim Ji-yeon delivering on a pseudo-romantic subplot that intially sees Lee’s Kkachi trying to get in the sack with Lim’s Young-mi, and the latter constantly rejecting his advances. Ryoo Seung-bum is one of the easiest sells for the film in the title role, as his versatility maintains him as one of the most beloved and strongest actors working in Korean cinema.
There’s at least one plot hole out of a few that never gets explained, pertaining to how Madonna managed to come to the conclusion she did when looking at Il-chul’s hand earlier in the film. You get the idea that she’s some kind of palm reader, though clearly she’s not, and for that matter, the fact that she’s much more than she claims to be becomes all too painfully clear. In the end, it’s Il-chul who is forced to deal with the consequences of his own ego, and confront the demons of his past before they ruin his future.
In following in the footsteps of two other directors before him, Kwon creates an energizing tale that dishes as hard as it takes, and with a level of violence that would be suitable for general audiences were it not for a few scenes that won’t bode well for the squeamish. The crux of the film, though, is the card playing, and the caliber of storytelling and acting Kwon compiles to make Tazza: One Eyed Jack work, and for what it’s worth, it does.
If Tazza: One Eyed Jack is your first leap into the franchise, then it could motivate you to take a gander at the 2006 and 2014 films. It helps that you don’t really need to watch the first two films to enjoy the third, while the connective thread tying it to the two does occurs in an a nifty little cameo that knowledgeable fans of the Tazza franchise, bookending a threequel that deals an exemplary hand.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!