The Thieves 도둑들 2012- South Korea

The Thieves (도둑들) is a South Korea, high action packed film, released in 2012 by Director Choi Dong-hoon. At the time of its release, it sold 12.9 million tickets, making it the 4th highest grossing film in the Korean box office. It is no surprise this movie had such a great success with it's all star cast, which included Jun Ji-Hyun (My Sassy Girl, Assasination), Kim Yun-Seok (The Chaser), Lee Jung-Jae (Assasination, The Housemaid),  Kim Soo Hyun (Secretly, Greatly, My Love From the Star) and Oh Dal-Su (Old Boy, Assassination). You might be thinking, Hey! a lot of these actors were also in the 2015 film, Assassination. You are correct! Director Choi rounded up many of the same actors from The Thieves to perform in his most recent and very successful box-office hit. If you haven't already, check out Lights, Camera, Asia's post on Assassination here! 

The Thieves is about a group of highly talented South Korean thieves who band together with a group of thieves from China to steal a diamond necklace from a casino in Macau. Tensions rise between friends, and past romances are bright to light upon the meeting of these two groups. They begin plotting out how they will get in and get out of the casino with the $30 million "tear of the sun" diamond. This might be the biggest heist of their lives, if they didn't have their own agendas. It also doesn't help that aside from police, they also have a crime boss, Wei Hong, on their tails. The Thieves bears some similarities to the American film, Ocean's Eleven (2001), an action packed film about thieves trying to steal money from 3 Las Vegas casinos. However, The Thieves holds it's own with lightning speed storyline, memorable characters, and several interweaving plot lines. 
Director Choi and screenplay writer, Lee Ki-Cheol, were very successful in creating 10 likable, and rememberable characters. They were able to create protagonists that all had very strong character developments.With this large amount of characters, a film could have been very hard to follow, however, Director Choi has the ability to take each of the subplots, and interweave them into a beautiful, action packed storyline, sometimes by mirroring characters in similar situations. The female protagonists also have just as much screen time as the men, and are tough and able to kick just as much butt!

Check out the trailer for The Thieves below!!

What is your favorite East Asian action film? Comment below!

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