Web gossip kills careers in Tabloid Truth

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      Starring Kim Kang-Woo. In Korean, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

      Tabloid journalism is such an easy target, you wonder why movies even bother. Tabloid Truth, however, is more interested in web gossip as just one more weapon in political wars. And by politics it, of course, means money.

      A sophomore effort for actor turned director Kim Kwang-Sik, the two-hour drama begins as a bland show-business tale, with handsome young go-getter Woo-Gon (Le Grand Chef’s Kim Kang-Woo) quitting his day job to work full-time managing an up-and-coming actress. The movie insists that she’s got the right stuff, but it’s hard to tell from Ko Won-Hee’s pouty performance just what her specialness entails. Anyway, she’s interesting enough to get smeared by an online tabloid accusing her of an illicit relationship with a senior congressman.

      Her career instantly fizzles, and things get worse, driving Woo-Gon to find out why his beloved client got the TMZ treatment. Through detective work and an exciting foot chase through the side streets of downtown Seoul, he manages to locate the outfit’s secret headquarters. After causing a violent scene, he connects with its rumpled editor (Jeong Jin-Young), a former investigative journalist who took on one corporation too many.

      Aided by the obligatory bearded tech nerd (Ko Chang-Seok), the two start to grasp that the smear had something to do with a development deal favoured by the same mega-company that crippled the tabloid chief. (Isn’t it always about real estate?) This leads Woo-Gon to hostile confrontations with the outfit’s tough PR boss (Park Won-Sang) and even tougher security chief (the coolly menacing Park Seong-Woong), known for his finger-breaking skills.

      Woo-Gon takes more beat-downs than Jason Bourne at a KGB–CIA reunion, although he always seems to heal up for the next round of infiltrations and reveals. Not always convincing as drama, the smoothly made Tabloid Truth is impressively angry about the way corruption swallows the innocent and the guilty.

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