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Taste of Money (The) AKA Do-nui mat
R2 - United Kingdom - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Samuel Scott (18th December 2013). |
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The Film
 ***This is an A/V and extras review only. For reviews on the movie from various critics, we recommend visiting HERE.*** From the director of The Housemaid (Im Sang-soo) comes a ‘bitter and delicious’ thriller of lust, seduction, decadence and betrayal. One of South Korea's richest families, controlled with a vice-like grip by Geum-ok (Yoon Yeo-jeong), wife of the prominent but disillusioned family-business President, Yoon (Baek Yun-shik), is in the throes of crisis. Her newly appointed personal secretary, a handsome and ambitious young man, Joo (Kim Kang-woo), deals with the families immoral-and illegal-activities whilst patiently waiting for his own chance for financial reward, but when he is witness to an affair the balance of power shifts, with tragic consequences. As their personal and professional empire begins to unravel and a scandalous arrest threatens to expose the family's unsavoury secrets, the steely-cold Geum-ok turns to the basest form of revenge left available to her, cold-blooded murder. Lost between his own shrinking sense of morality and a shortcut to an ever-growing bank balance, Joo has to decide between rescuing what is left of his moral soul and a the plentiful supply of cold-hard-cash that lies waiting for him on wooden pallets in the household’s basement vault.
Video
The Taste of Money is released onto DVD in the United Kingdom by Arrow Films. It is presented in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 which has been anamorphically enhanced, and I have to say, it looks pretty damn good. Although the film itself might not have been as good as I had hoped, it is visually stunning, and very much uses many greys, blacks and light blues throughout to give the feature a very particular look and a feeling of uneasiness and tension, fitting perfectly with the characteristics of each personality. Detail is about as strong as one could hope, with clothing looking almost meticulous, bar the occasional moment of blockiness in some of the darker blacks. Skin tones are purposely a little on the soft side, giving each character a wonderful mistaken feeling of warmth. The palette here is very much confined and works brilliantly, adding atmosphere to an otherwise formulaic script. As to be expected for such a new feature, there is no sign of any damage to the print. No scratches, no dust, and no blemishes were noticeable to my eyes. The disc is PAL, and the feature runs 110:12.
Audio
There is just a single audio track here; Dolby Digital 5.1 which is in a mixture of Korean and English. The film is very much a dialogue driven affair, and as such, the surrounds and the LFE are relatively quiet. Dialogue is crisp and clean throughout, and separation and directionality of the dialogue is above average. The score makes reasonable use of the surrounds, as does the occasional sound effect from the rare moment of (and I use this word very lightly) action. There's the odd subtle effect like in the surrounds such as footsteps also, but they are perhaps slightly underused. There's no damage to the audio track by way of dropouts or scratches, and I noticed no background hiss. English subtitles are optional, but only available for the Korean dialogue, which takes up 90% or so. If you are deaf or hard-of-hearing and rely on subtitles, you will be disappointed in missing some of the main discussions that move the plot forward.
Extras
Start-up Trailers (3:35) Theatrical Trailer (1:34)
Overall
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