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Parents' Guide to

The Drug King

By Brian Costello, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Ultra-violent Korean crime movie has cursing, drug use.

Movie NR 2019 139 minutes
The Drug King Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

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

  • The Drug King Movie: Scene #1
  • The Drug King Movie: Scene #2
  • The Drug King Movie: Scene #3

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What's the Story?

In THE DRUG KING, Lee Doo-sam (Song Kang-ho) is a jeweler in Busan, South Korea, in the 1970s, but he wants to find a way to make a better life for himself and his wife. He begins to make inroads into the criminal underworld, and soon becomes a minor player in the smuggling of narcotics. After getting busted and changing his name, Lee Doo-sam gets out of prison on a fake medical leave and promptly changes his identity. With the help of his cousin, as well as his connections in the underworld and in the Korean government, Lee Doo-sam develops a powerful strain of "crank" that he has decided to name and market as "Made in Korea." He begins a meteoric rise as the drug lord responsible for exporting all the crystal meth in Japan. While he tries to maintain a level of respectability as an upstanding community leader and supporter of the economic growth of Korea, Lee Doo-sam loses his wife and begins an affair with the powerfully connected and materialistic Kim Jeong-ah (Doona Bae). As his power grows, Lee Doo-sam becomes more and more delusional and addicted to the drug he's smuggling, and an intrepid police investigator from Seoul moves ever closer to finding a way to stop Lee Doo-sam and his criminal enterprise.

Is It Any Good?

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

This movie is incredibly derivative. The slow descent into the drug-crazed madness of the lead character (among other moments) mirrors Scarface. The "follow the money" montages mirror Casino. And the ironic use of '70s bubble-gum pop, classic rock, and opera is by now as much of a cliché as any other cliché in the "rise and fall of a player in the drug-smuggling underworld" genre. The attempts at humor often fall flat, and end up muddying the waters as to the type of person the lead character is supposed to be. Is he a bumbling fool? A criminal mastermind? Both? Neither? With the movie running for two hours and 20 minutes, there comes a point when the triteness and the confusion become wearing.

The acting is universally solid, and there's a compelling story in all of this. But it's so often lost in hitting all the overdone tropes, exhausted character types, and missed plot points that The Drug King lacks any potential originality it could have had. The result is the constant feeling that you have seen this all before in so many other (better) movies.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about movies centered on the drug trade. How does The Drug King compare to other movies that show the criminal underworld and how they manage to export and import drugs from one country to another?

  • Did the movie glamorize drug use? Why or why not?

  • How was music used in this movie? How is this similar to the way directors such as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino use music in their movies?

Movie Details

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