Parents' Guide to

Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage

By Brian Costello, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Violence and profanity abound in gritty Korean police drama.

Movie NR 2019 127 minutes
Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

  • Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage Movie: Scene #1
  • Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage Movie: Scene #2
  • Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage Movie: Scene #3

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What's the Story?

In JO PIL-HO: THE DAWNING RAGE, Jo Pil-ho (Sun-kyun Lee) is a corrupt homicide detective engaged in various seedy activities that line his pockets. While officers in Internal Affairs suspect that Jo is up to something, they haven't been able to pin anything on him just yet. With his money tied up in a suspect real estate deal, Jo sets up a heist of a police warehouse. But when the warehouse explodes while Jo and his cronies are in the middle of the break-in, Jo finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. As it turns out, those behind the explosion are trying to cover up a multimillion-dollar scandal involving the largest corporation in Korea. The only thing keeping Jo alive is that he's believed to be in possession of one of the two videos sent by Jo's crony, who died in the explosion while trying to rob the warehouse. The one person who actually has the video footage is the crony's girlfriend, who has already robbed Jo of money he had stashed in the crony's apartment. Now, Jo must find a way to prove that he had nothing to do with the explosion, keep the girl safe, somehow convince her to give him access to her phone and the footage, and reveal to the world the extent of the corruption being perpetrated by the CEO of the corporation behind this massive corruption.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This drama takes some interesting plot twists but ultimately doesn't make an impact. Part of it stems from an overreliance on profanity to create a sense of realism in the dialogue. Every expletive in the book is used. Furthermore, in a way that seems almost inevitable in movies such as these, the use of non sequiturs from the bad guys -- talk of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, for instance -- comes off as forced and trite. There are also one or two story threads too many, which is why Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage is at least 20 minutes longer than it needs to be.

While there's something compelling to the lead character and his struggles with right vs. wrong (or perhaps kinda wrong vs. actually really wrong), this type of moral ambiguity has also been done to death in far too many action movies to name. The stylized grittiness often works, but when the movie gets lost in the various threads of the B, C, and D storylines, there are times when it feels like you're marking time until the next action sequence. The result is a bombastic action movie that is decent at times but overall leaves you with the impression that you've seen it all before.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about profanity in movies. How much is too much? Was the profanity in Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage necessary to realistically reflect how characters such as these communicate, or did it seem gratuitous?

  • Did the violence seem necessary to the story, or did it seem like much of it was added to make the movie more entertaining?

  • How does this compare to other gritty "noir" movies you've seen?

Movie Details

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