THE DIVINE MOVE

Go champion Tae-seok, is sitting in a van outside a gaming den with an earpiece looking at a monitor. He’s giving instructions to his elder brother, who tries to defeat underground kingpin Sal-soo on the Go board. But the gangsters, who are also cheating, are on to them and Tae-sok has to witness his brother getting killed. Sal-soo pins the murder on him, which gets him sent away behind bars for seven years. Inside prison Tae-seok trains his muscles and brains, preparing for his revenge. Once he’s out, he gathers a team of legendary Go-players and starts to infiltrate Sal-soo’s gang, wanting to take them out one by one.

Go is an extremely popular strategic game in Asia, with world championships and televised matches drawing crowds of millions. It has an especially huge following in Korea. So it’s no wonder that it proved fertile ground for a hard hitting thriller dealing with gambling, murder, revenge, martial arts and Go itself. Director Beom-gu Cho has turned the game into a life and dead struggle of brawn and brains, starring Woo-sung Jung (The Good, The Bad, The Weird, Reign of Assassins) as Ta-seok.