![]() As it skates through double- and triple-crosses, “The Swindlers” shifts from real-world outrage to a payoff so tailor-made for the movie that it even teases a sequel. But the action is less realistic and relies on flawless high-tech equipment and impossibly convincing disguises. The movie is grounded in real events, and it makes evocative use of authentic locations in Seoul, Incheon and Thailand. ![]() ![]() Everyone distrusts everyone else, and rightly so. Park and Hwang begin a shaky alliance, supported by three veteran grifters, including the requisite seductive beauty (Nana, a teen-pop star who grew up to star in the Korean-TV remake of “The Good Wife”). So would Hwang (Hyun Bin), a pretty-boy scam virtuoso who blames the criminal for the death of his father, a master forger. Their risk is managed by Park (played by “Oldboy” villain Yoo Ji-Tae), a corrupt prosecutor who’d like to see the fugitive dead. The fraud’s shadowy mastermind flees the country, leaving behind a lot of politically well-connected conspirators. The story begins with the devastation caused by a Ponzi scheme that, not so unusually for South Korea, involves a bogus religion. ![]() Except that director Jang Chang-won depicts a scandal that reaches all the way to a leading presidential candidate, an audacious premise for a movie set in South Korea, whose top elected official was ousted for corruption just months ago. With its jazz-funk score and trust-no-one scenario, “The Swindlers” is an entertaining if mostly routine con-game thriller.
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