Tazza: The High Rollers (2006)

A gambling table looks like the realm of luck, but to true masters it is a battlefield of skill and psychology. Tazza follows the fall and growth of a young man who sets foot in that world, showing how sly and how seductive Korean crime entertainment can be. It draws on the indigenous material of hwatu cards, yet the film’s grain is unexpectedly polished and fast-paced. It is the story of people who bet their entire lives on a single sleight of the fingertips.

What it’s about — A young man’s fall, dragged into the gambling table

Go-ni (Jo Seung-woo), once an ordinary factory worker, loses his entire fortune to gambling and falls into a deeper mire trying to win it back. Along the way he meets the legendary gambler Pyeong Gyeong-jang (Baek Yoon-sik), learns the techniques of hwatu, and enters the world of true high rollers. On that road, the seductive yet dangerous Madam Jeong (Kim Hye-soo) and the sly con man Go Gwang-ryeol (Yu Hae-jin) become entangled. The larger the table grows, the higher both the stakes and the danger swell together. The film densely weaves Go-ni’s process of cutting through one hand after another, crossing between tension and humor.

Direction — A genre balance crossing between tension and humor

Choi Dong-hoon’s craft shines throughout. He chops the tension of the moment the hwatu cards pass back and forth into fine pieces with rapid cuts and close-ups, creating an immersion as if you were seated at that very table. Most impressive of all is his sense of genre balance. Gambling scenes that make your palms sweat, the laughter the sly characters create, and betrayal and violence all mingle naturally within one film. This calibration, tilting toward no single side, keeps the long 139-minute runtime from growing dull.

The flavor of the dialogue cannot be left out either. Each character has a way of speaking and memorable lines that stick to the tongue, so that each scene lingers long in the memory. That said, as it heads into the second half the events crowd in somewhat densely, so a first-time viewer needs a little focus to follow the web of relationships.

Performance — Kim Hye-soo’s Madam Jeong commanding the table

Jo Seung-woo persuasively renders Go-ni’s change from an innocent young man into a seasoned high roller. The eyes of the reckless early stage and the eyes of the latter half, when he has learned to read the table, are clearly different. Madam Jeong, played by Kim Hye-soo, is the most intense figure in the film. Her performance, holding desire, calculation, and even a certain loneliness all at once, lifts the film’s temperature in an instant. Baek Yoon-sik anchors the center with the presence of a weighty mentor, and Yu Hae-jin opens up the film’s breathing room with his signature slyness. The villain played by Kim Eung-soo, too, creates a chilling tension with his entrance alone. The actors’ chemistry lifts this work beyond a simple piece of entertainment.

What the film says — The lavishness of a big score borders on ruin

Tazza depicts the thrill of gambling while never forgetting what it ultimately eats away. The more Go-ni masters his skills and grows the table, the more the things he loses pile up alongside. The film shows how intense the temptation of a big score is while coldly noting what waits at its end. The world of people who believe they can change their fate with a sleight of the fingertips is lavish, but that lavishness always borders on ruin. So this film, while a satisfying entertainment, also reads as a chilling fable about desire.

Ratings & reception

The IMDb rating is 7.1 out of 10. The Metacritic score is 77 out of 100, with overseas critics too prizing the quality of its direction and screenplay. Domestically it scored a major box-office hit upon release, becoming a benchmark for Korean crime entertainment and beloved enough to continue as a series. That its skill in unpacking indigenous material with a polished genre grammar has not faded with time speaks well to this work’s standing.

Verdict

It is a well-shaped entertainment film, so much so that its long runtime seems beside the point. It sustains the tension of gambling as a subject all the way to the end while covering the gaps with the charm of its characters and the fun of its dialogue. Above all, the vivid characters the actors create linger long in the memory. If you want to confirm the strength of Korean genre cinema, it is a hard work to leave out, and so four stars follow naturally.

Recommended for

• Those who love crime entertainment where tension and humor blend well
• Those who want to see Kim Hye-soo’s intense presence again
• Those who enjoy the well-constructed screenplay and dialogue of Korean genre cinema