In short: Collectors (2020)

Original title: 도굴

Warning: vague spoilers ahead!

Kang Dong-goo (Lee Je-hoon) is highly talented grave robber, specialising in plundering archaeological sites with the help of his foster father and his foster sister. He’s a bit of a curious example of his kind, though, giving away whatever money he gets for the stolen goods. He is clearly trying to get into the good books of a very specific collector of illegal archaeological goods and his assistant Se-hee (Shin Hye-sun). Eventually, Dong-goo manages to achieve that goal, and finds himself tasked with stealing a mythical sword hidden in a Joseon era tomb situated right in the middle of Seoul. Fortunately, he has already acquired the help of a rogue archaeologist going by the moniker of Dr Jones (Jo Woo-jin) and the best digger around (Im Won-hee). Now there’s only the little problem of escaping the tender mercies of a tenacious cop, a gangster boss and the collector he’s working for. Well, that’s before we get to Dong-goo’s actual plans.

Because Park Jung-bae’s Collectors isn’t just a grave-robbing heist movie but actually a classic caper movie where a rich bastard gets his just deserts courtesy of a former victim using his own greed against him, this way also a vengeance movie without a climactic killing. In my books, that’s one of the more satisfying genre combinations imaginable, and a filmmaker would truly need to go out of their way to ruin this sort of film for me.

Park certainly doesn’t ruin anything, instead using a slick visual style for a playful jaunt through all kinds of genre standards and tropes, changing an element here and there, and presenting it all well-timed and with (mostly, apart from one somewhat problematic scene) very good humour, never lingering at any set piece or idea too long for the audience to notice their implausibility or for it to become boring. The humour is broad but effective, the set pieces are clever and fun, and the heist – once we realize what it actually is - is rather delightful and fitting to its victims.

Collectors wins quite a few extra points by admitting that stealing cultural treasures is actually a pretty shitty thing to do – something quite a few films of its genres tend to downplay so as not to make their heroes look bad – and using this as part of its plot as well as to make its happy end even happier, which makes a very satisfying piece of popcorn cinema even more satisfying.