Asura city's foundations are completely mired in madness, just like the rest of humanity. The only difference is - Asura doesn't bother to hide it. The city has no rules at its foundation except the basest of human nature, exposed. That is its truth, its mystery and its unknown law. What every other city calls "order" is an attempt to impose something comprehensible and workable.

When you realize this, only one things can be worse - that everyone else also realizes this - that all their purpose is full of craziness and at bottom, utterly illogical. Together they bring out the worst in each other. Every diabolical villany is accounted for - in full, shameless display through snarling contempt and nonchalant ultraviolence.

Start at the very bottom of our base nature and progressively work downwards from there into the abyss. Relentlessly finding untraceable paths that are successively worse than the last, leading to only one conclusion.

You wanted to accept everything. Now accept that groups of men are so completely mad, that should their veil of civility be lifted, they are dancing with each in the darkest places of hell. Asura lifts that veil. Asura is a bonfire of all vanities - and the bigger the fire grows - the more darkness is revealed.

Genius yes, because the difference between insanity ahd genius lies in how others accept your insanity. Korean films are 1000 years ahead of Hollywood and 500 years ahead of European cinema.

I decided to check this film out because I like Kim Sung-Su's films. His films tends to have the comic book style going for it which I liked. I even liked the film "Please Teach Me English" which was panned by critics. I thought it was a fun comedy that wasn't overly ambitious. Most of his previous films go in a fairly simple direction. But this time Kim Sung-Su put a lot into this movie, he basically threw in a lot of story elements which in some ways I felt that dragged down this film. And just slowed down the pacing without adding much weight to it. It seems that Kim Sung-Su gets more complex as his filmmaking career progresses. What this is, is a dark, gritty and very tragic and bleak film. Once again the main star is Jung Woo-Sung, who was the main star in multiple Kim Sung-Su films. This time around he plays a retired detective that is caught up in the middle of corruption. But he places himself in that position in order to save his dying wife. The corruption between the sadistic and sociopathic mayor and overly aggressive, ruthless and narcissistic investigator tears the main lead apart. Most of the scenes are composed of corruption, bickering, greed, manipulation and the main lead getting beat up constantly. It really does get tiresome after awhile. It's one of those films that is sort of complex, with constant bickering, trash talking and violence without much substance in between. By the end the whole experience just felt pointless. It's still a pointless watchable film, just to sum it up.

6/10

I didn't even know about "Asura" from 2016 from writer and director Sung-su Kim before I stumbled upon it in 2020 and was given the chance to sit down and watch it. Naturally I took the time to do so, as I am a fan of Asian cinema, and South Korean cinema is usually quite good.

This movie, however, was just bland and mediocre. Now, I will say that they had a strong cast ensemble to perform the various roles and bring the characters to life, and the movie does have some strong performances by both Woo-sung Jung and Jung-min Hwang. But ultimately, the storyline was just too slow-paced and not enough of any worthwhile did happen throughout the course of the 2 hours and 15 minutes the movie played for.

The entire storyline was just mundane and generic. It wasn't particularly outstanding or memorable in the least, and the movie suffered horribly from having such a generic storyline. It was a shame, because there were some really nice acting performances, but they could only do so much to help lift up the blandness that was the script and storyline.

For a South Korean action / crime movie, then "Asura" was not particularly exceptional, and there are far better choices if you like this particular genre of movies readily available on the Asian movie market.

I am rating "Asura" a mediocre five out of ten stars, because entertainment-wise then the movie wasn't cutting it for me. This is not a movie that warrants a second viewing in any way.