User Reviews

This South Korean animation opens just after bankrupt businessman Kyung-min has murdered his wife, after showering he calls Jong-suk; an old friend he hadn't spoken to since they were in middle school together. They meet up for a drink and start reminiscing about their time at school. These weren't good times; the children of wealthy parents were allowed to lord it over the others with impunity and nobody did a thing about it… until one day when Kyung-min was being bullied a boy at the back of the class stood up and told the bully to stop. The bully hits him but unlike the others who just take it he fights back. This boy is Chul and he will change Jong-suk and Kyung-min forever. The violence doesn't stop but when the bullies who run the school try to put Chul in his place he just strikes back harder. Eventually Chul is expelled but that doesn't stop his determination to make sure those boys who seem the run the school will never look back on their school days with happiness.

This may be an animated film but it certainly isn't for children; the violence may not be extreme but it is brutally believable. There are no truly sympathetic characters; we know Kyung-min has murdered his wife and see Jong-suk striking his in the opening scenes and following Chul's lead they stab and kill a cat during the prolonged flashback to their school days. The animation style also served to increase the sense of brutality; it had a deliberately ugly look unlike the western and most of the Japanese animation that I've seen. There is a constant feeling that things won't end well and indeed they don't but not in the way I'd expected.

Overall I'd definitely recommend this film although I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again in a hurry as it is so downbeat. This belongs up there with 'Lord of the Flies' when it comes to stories about just how savage children can be.

"Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. There is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one gets one's ribs re-broken." - Inga Muscio

Grotesque and violent, Yeun Sang-Ho's "The King of Pigs" is a low budget animated feature from South Korea. Like a demented take on Orwell's "Animal Farm", or Golding's "Lord of the Flies" (to which its title alludes), the film watches as a gang of privileged kids (nicknamed the "dogs") repeatedly brutalise and bully a school's lower class students (nicknamed the "pigs").

Orwell's tale saw one pig rise and destroy his oppressors. In "The King of Pigs" we see a poverty stricken student, Chul Kim, stand up to his bullying school-mates. Rather than a romantic hero, though, Chul is portrayed as a violent psychopath. "We must become more evil than they are," Chul explains, internalising the hate directed at him and re-directing it, tenfold, at those who brutalise him.

Virtually everyone in Yeun Sang-Ho's tale is understood as being either a victim or victimiser. Workers and employers, the rich and the poor, businessmen and prostitutes, students and teachers, men and women, bullies and classmates, humans and animals...they're all trapped in Yeun Sang-Ho's very rigid social hierarchy. Even those who seem to escape poverty ultimately find themselves back in financial debt, beholden to others. Capitalism as a form of psychic and literal violence, the film paints a world bound by the laws of competition, predation and psychopathy. "Money only follows the rich," Chul says, "you need to be a monster if you don't want to keep living like a loser."

Whilst Yeun Sang-Ho's film portrays a very real, contemporary problem in South Korea – parental/social pressures and limited job vacancies have led to a rise in local bullying – all his films are works of social critique which portray a more global situation. In "Pigs" we thus see an expansive, social hierarchy based on wealth; the ruling "dogs" and the subservient "pigs". This regime, which infects all social institutions, is enforced by the oldest all the way down to the youngest. Through them, violence is perpetrated against those lower in the social pecking order: the rich against the poor, men against women and humans against animals, who represent the lowest rung on the ladder and the most vulnerable.

"The King of Pigs" is blunt, unsubtle and pushes its ideas, themes and caricatures to every possible extreme. Women aren't only abused by husbands, but decapitated. Children aren't cruel to animals, but stab them repeatedly. Bosses don't underpay their employees, but beat and humiliate them in public. Like all good grotesque art, Yeun Sang-Ho deals entirely in extremes. Interestingly, the film's aesthetic limitations (low frame rate, small budget etc) only amplify its more grotesque aspects. The result is not only a film populated with freakish, disturbing characters, but one which taps deeply into a reality shared and suffered by many in our world. Elsewhere the film touches upon domestic violence, portraying it as a consequence of male disenfranchisement and male impotency (numerous studies have pointed to the correlation between male unemployment and violence toward women and children).

Like an animated version of Pasolini's "Salo", every scene in Yeun Sang-Ho's film is drenched in overt brutality or quiet, unsettling angst. The film's nihilism, which only occasionally gives way to compassion, reaches its apex with Yeun Sang-Ho's final scene. Here the film pushes past the moral bankruptcy of late-capitalism to declare our entire species valueless. "Earth is covered by asphalt as cold as ice and by bodies colder that it is," a young killer muses. Yeun Sang-Ho's follow-up film, "The Fake", is equally misanthropic.

8.9/10 – Superb.

This is probably one of the most depressing cartoons I have ever seen. The story at first may seem to be about bullying in middle school at the surface but it's way more than that. This movie is about humanity, shown in a realistic perspective. That some viewers that is in tune with Korean culture may agree with or part of it or at least understand it. It really is a messed up and yet realistic cartoon that is shown in a brutal manner. The story revolves around 3 middle school kids that feel that they will always be the underdogs no matter how hard they try. So one of the kids has the mentality of being vicious, malicious and evil in order to defeat the corrupt. In another words fight fire with lava. Now the kids portrayed in this movie who re being bullied may seem crazy to some, but it's understandable. This movie basically shows the ugly side of humanity and how the people that are suppressed deal with it. However I am not quite sure what the message of this movie is about because the theme basically seems to revolve around hopelessness. Is the message about fighting back, taking what you want from other people and vengeance, because the weak gets taken advantage of? Anyways this didn't have that emotional impact like what the director Sang-ho Yeon tried to convey, but it's still a gripping and attention grabbing flick. Not all Asian cartoon flicks can be like Hayao Miyazaki films with happy endings.

6.3/10

The King of Pigs is certainly not an animated feature for kids. Despite the story being about the school life of a group of boys, this is a very bleak and disturbing story. It begins in the way that it means to go on with us being introduced to the two central characters. Both are now around the age of thirty, and both clearly have extreme issues. Jong-suk is a wife-beating journalist who has aspirations of becoming a novelist; while Kyung-min is a failed businessman who we are led to believe has murdered his wife just prior to the story beginning. The two men meet in a café and discuss their schooldays. They have never even spoken in fifteen years, since an incident at school. The rest of the story is told in flashback, returning to the men periodically and ending with them after a very surprising twist.

The boys were the victims of systematic bullying. A hierarchal society existed where the weak were known as the pigs and the bullies, the dogs. The teachers actively encouraged the situation as a way of controlling the school in a brutal regimented manner. Only that it would have worked seamlessly was it not for a boy called Chul. This mysterious loner stood fearlessly up to the bullies and simply combated them with far greater levels of violence. He became the King of Pigs and was the saviour of the downtrodden. However, he had a real darkness within him, and a tragic family life. The film's trajectory hurtles towards a depressing conclusion.

I found this South Korean animation very moving and involving. Unlike Japanese anime I have seen, this feature is not afraid to depict the characters with real Asian faces. The world the characters live in feels like a real South Korean place. This focus on realism is to the film's huge credit. This means that the carefully chosen fantasy moments that occur within the film have more impact, such as the dead cat that mocks the boys in hallucinations; it was an animal they brutally killed. It has to be said that The King of Pigs is a very dark and troubling story about bullying and the way it can shape lives forever. It's a cartoon that allows the viewer to think, it does not spell out the intricacies of its protagonist's inner minds. We are allowed to work out for ourselves much of what we see. It really is a cartoon that actually lives up to the adult label. Highly recommended.

although this received some good press and was supported by the excellent folks at subway cinema, this movie is heavy-handed, monotonous and badly made junk. i suppose it would be a novelty to somebody who has never seen adult animation, but otherwise don't waste your time. if you want smart and rich adult animation, go watch heavy traffic (bakshi), berserk, shigurui, my neighbors the yamadas, ghost in the shell: innocence or porco rosso.

the king of pigs animation combines limited, inconsistent and ugly drawings (like king of the hill and beavis and butt head) with rotoscoping (tracing) and bad computer generated models. i saw this on the big screen and the animation is definitely the worst i've ever seen for a theatrical film-- and i saw cool world when it came out.

like many bad korean movies, it is monotonously mean and there are stupid twists that undo the limited amount of characterization the writing provided (see also: the good the bad and the weird, the host, shiru). the characters are dull and one dimensional, the scenes are repetitive, the animation is awful and the overall experience tedious.