Description

Goni is a man with a problem. More than a problem, really. Goni has an addiction, hard and fast, to gambling in general, and specifically hwatu, an old-as-the-hills Korean card game played with a deck of tiny, flower-blazoned cards. This wouldn’t be such a problem if Goni weren’t so embarrassingly bad at it. Cleaned out of his life savings, Goni steals more from his family and loses that too. What’s a poor kid to do? Well, when this poor kid realizes that he’s just been swindled by an organized ring of cheaters, he sets off on a quest to track them down and beat them at their own game, having first apprenticed himself to a wise old hwatu master. Enter the world of Tazza, a world where the hand is faster than the eye, where deception is the name of the game and where neither friendship nor enmity last forever.

Call it a Guy Ritchie film with more soul. Choi Dong-Hun’s Tazza: The High Rollers (AKA War of Flowers) is embarrassingly rich in all of Ritchie’s familiar elements: eye-popping colours, a restless, roaming camera, rapid-fire editing, an edge of criminality tempered by a cast of charming characters who you’d be equally pleased to take into your bed or home to mom. But Choi’s film has something that Ritchie’s tend to lack -- characters with a decent amount of depth to back up the style. Goni’s life itself is a card game, a constantly shifting mix of allegiances and strategies as he moves through a succession of trainers, partners, and beautiful femmes fatales as he constantly raises the stakes to get to the top of the heap. Choi’s film understands the most basic rule of gambling -- you don’t play the cards, you play your opponent –- and plays its hand accordingly, setting Goni against a rich and complex blend of characters, and you can bet every single one of them has their own hidden agenda.

—Todd Brown

“Casting, direction and a script with more angles than a Bauhaus building all come up trumps... with the whole shebang pushed along by Jang Yeong-gyu's cool jazz score” - VARIETY

“Bet on [War of Flowers] to entertain; you can't lose” - Matt Zoller Seitz, NEW YORK TIMES

Credits

Director: Choi Dong-Hun
Screenplay: Choi Dong-hun, Ha Yeong-min
Cast: Cho Seung-woo Baek Yun-shik Kim Hye-su Choi Dong-hun
Producers: Cha Seoung-Jae, Kim Mi-hee
Distributor: CJ Entertainment