"Of course — Chuseok means 'Tazza.'"
The "Tazza" franchise, which began in 2006 and has been a beloved R-rated entertainment franchise in the Chuseok holiday box office, has dealt its final hand. "Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub" puts Texas hold'em front and center in place of hwatu, the Korean card game, and expands its setting from Korea to Japan and Vietnam. With harder-hitting action and a faster pace, the film takes direct aim at male viewers in their 20s and 30s, marking a shift for the two-decade-old series.
The film traces the friendship and betrayal between Jang Tae-young (Byun Yo-han), who succeeds on innate instinct and luck, and Park Tae-young (Noh Jae-won), who has clawed out his own place through relentless effort. The two close friends are driven apart by jealousy and a sense of inferiority, and Jang Tae-young, having lost everything, learns poker to take revenge. "In poker, dying is all there is," says his mentor Kwak Dong-wook (Jo Woo-jin) — a line that compresses the film's view of what it means to compete.
What makes the film interesting is that it looks into the desires of the loser rather than the glamour of the winner. Lucifer as the ace of spades and Beelzebub as the two of spades serve as metaphors for Jang Tae-young and Park Tae-young, and their relationship escalates into a collision of talent and inferiority in the manner of Mozart and Salieri.
Byun Yo-han's performance stands out in particular, carrying the entire film on his own. He takes full responsibility for the dramatic arc of Jang Tae-young's life from beginning to end — a computer engineering student at Seoul National University, a successful businessman, a man cast into ruin by a friend's betrayal, a gambler who throws himself into poker for revenge, and a figure caught up in intense romance. Moving between the appeal of a man who has it all — loved, academically gifted, good-looking and shrewd in business — and the harrowing face of someone sharpening a blade for revenge, he renders the character's steep fall convincingly and brings out an aura all his own, critics say.
Noh Jae-won is also striking. His character betrays his friend in a tangle of affection, resentment toward his own fate, hunger for success and feelings of inferiority. He most clearly brings out the question at the heart of the film: who is the ugliest devil of all? Yoon Kyung-ho, a scene-stealer by his very presence, leaves a weighty impression as contract killer Jo Joong-hwan, and rapper Swings, taking on acting, draws attention with a distinctive turn. Rated 19 and over, 129 minutes. Opens on the 23rd.
