In Park Hoon-jung‘s films, power rarely changes hands peacefully, and those who have spent their lives serving powerful men often discover that loyalty gives little protection when everything begins to fall apart. His latest crime thriller, Tristes Tropiques (슬픈 열대, 2025), returns to the violent criminal world that has become familiar territory for the South Korean filmmaker, although this time he is interested in people who have never been given much control over their own lives. Raised to become assassins, his characters have learned to survive through violence, and when the man responsible for their upbringing is murdered, they find themselves fighting over an organisation that has controlled almost every aspect of their lives since childhood.
The story begins with the murder of Master, played by Kim Myung-min, the ruthless leader of an organisation known as Tristes Tropiques, who has taken abandoned children and trained them to become professional killers. His death leaves the organisation without the man who controlled its members, and the assassins who grew up under his authority begin to turn against one another as suspicion, revenge and competing ambitions take hold. Meanwhile, former associates and rival criminal factions recognise an opportunity to claim the power he has left behind.
Among those caught in the violence is Roo, played by Lee Sin-young, who has attempted to leave his former life behind, and Jojo, portrayed by Park Yu-rim, another assassin raised under Master’s control. The cast also includes Park Hae-soo, Chen Yi-wen, Wang Po-chieh and Austin Lin, bringing together Korean and Taiwanese performers in a crime story.
Rather than spending the opening of the film explaining how Master built his organisation or established his authority, Park chooses to begin with his death, letting us see what happens when the person holding an entire criminal network together suddenly disappears. It is a decision that says much about the director’s interest in power, especially his belief that even the most intimidating organisations can be far less secure than they appear. When I asked why he had chosen to begin the story at the moment of Master’s death, Park told me, “I wanted to show just how fragile a system or established order can be, even when everyone believes it is strong and secure. I was also curious to explore how people’s desires and ambitions would come into play once that system began to fall apart.”
With Master gone, the people who once answered to him are left to decide what comes next, although years of living under his control have affected each of them differently. Some hope they might finally be able to leave the organisation behind, while others have spent so long following its rules that they cannot imagine living any other way. Some see his death as their chance to take control, and with several people competing for the same position, old loyalties quickly give way to suspicion, rivalry and further violence.
Throughout his career, Park has often returned to stories about criminal organisations, especially the complicated relationships between those who hold power and those who work under them. Before moving into directing, he made a name for himself as a screenwriter, working on Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil (2010) and Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Unjust (2010), for which he won Best Screenplay at the Blue Dragon Film Awards. He made his directorial debut with The Showdown (2011), although it was New World (2013), starring Lee Jung-jae, Choi Min-sik and Hwang Jung-min, that brought him greater recognition and showed just how well he could handle stories of organised crime and the complexities of human nature.
His later films have taken him into different genres without entirely abandoning those interests. The Tiger (2015) examined the relationship between human beings and the natural world, while V.I.P. (2017) returned to crime and the abuse of authority. The success of The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (2018) let him explore more fantastical territory, followed by Night in Paradise (2020), The Witch: Part 2. The Other One (2022) and The Childe (2023). Across these productions, Park has repeatedly created characters whose circumstances leave them vulnerable to exploitation, whether they are criminals, fugitives or young people who have become valuable to those seeking power.
With Tristes Tropiques, however, the question of personal responsibility becomes particularly uncomfortable because the assassins have been raised within an organisation that taught them to kill long before they could properly understand the consequences of their actions. Their upbringing has left them with very little experience of ordinary life, and the violence they commit cannot easily be separated from the circumstances in which they were raised. Asked whether their actions should be understood as personal choices or the result of the environment that produced them, Park was unequivocal: “I believe all of it comes from the world and the circumstances that shaped them. If these characters had grown up in a completely different environment, they would have lived entirely different lives.”
Park’s response raises questions about how much responsibility these characters can take for their actions when violence has been part of their lives since they were children. They have committed terrible acts, but they were also raised in an environment where killing was treated as something ordinary, and where they had little opportunity to learn how to live differently. Had they grown up with families who cared for them and let them make their own decisions, their lives might have taken an entirely different direction. Instead, the man they depended on for protection and survival was also the person who taught them to become killers.
Master brought these abandoned children together and gave them somewhere to belong, but his idea of looking after them meant preparing them for a life of violence. Although they spent their childhoods under the same roof, their experiences did not necessarily bring them closer or make them trust one another. After Master’s death, their different ambitions soon put them at odds with one another, and the bond they may have developed while growing up together means very little when some are desperate to survive and others are determined to take his place.
For Park, their relationships with Master and the organisation are not identical, and he was careful to distinguish between those who wanted freedom and those who had their own reasons for maintaining the existing hierarchy. “I think they all had different relationships with the system. Some wanted to escape it, others tried to adapt to it, while some followed it blindly and others wanted to use it for their own benefit,” the filmmaker explained.
Unlike many of Park’s earlier films, Tristes Tropiques takes place in a tropical city that looks very much like Bangkok. However, when I asked him about the choice of location, he explained that he had never intended the story to be set in one particular city. He was more interested in the atmosphere of a large Asian metropolis, with its crowded streets and the dangers that might be waiting around every corner. “I wasn’t thinking of Bangkok specifically. What I had in mind was a tropical city, the image of a large Asian metropolis surrounded by a tropical atmosphere. To me, the city is simply another kind of jungle,” Park told me.
It is an interesting way of looking at the film’s surroundings because the characters have been trained to survive in an environment where they must constantly be alert to danger. A crowded city may appear very different from the tropical forest associated with their upbringing, but Park sees a connection between the two. In either place, the characters are surrounded by potential threats, and the struggle for control continues regardless of whether they are moving through streets or more isolated territory. The setting also gives the film a wider geographical scope, with its multinational cast reflecting a criminal world that is not restricted to one country.
Tristes Tropiques made its world premiere at the 58th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Spain in October 2025, where it was selected for the Òrbita section. It also travelled to other international festivals, including the 44th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, where it received the Silver Raven, and the 32nd L’Étrange Festival in Paris, where it won the Nouveau Genre Grand Prize. Its London screening therefore follows an international festival run that has already brought considerable recognition to Park’s latest production.
Despite the familiarity of the criminal world he has created, Park believes there is an important difference between Tristes Tropiques and his earlier films. His interest in power and the collapse of established organisations has remained largely unchanged, but the characters in this story have much less freedom to decide how they respond to the violence surrounding them. When I asked what he had wanted to explore differently this time, Park explained, “My interest in power and the breakdown of established systems remains the same. The difference with this film is that the characters are exposed to violence they have no choice but to endure. In my previous films, the characters had choices, but in this story, they don’t.”
Roo’s attempts to leave the organisation are relevant to this idea, because walking away from a violent past does not necessarily mean that the people connected to it will allow someone to begin again. The film’s central conflict also raises difficult questions about responsibility, especially when those committing acts of violence have themselves experienced years of manipulation and abuse.
Park doesn’t excuse the terrible things his characters do, but he also makes it difficult to ignore what happened to them when they were young.
As the Closing Gala of the 21st London Korean Film Festival, Tristes Tropiques brings Park Hoon-jung’s familiar interests in violence and criminal power to British audiences through a story that places emphasis on upbringing and the absence of personal choice. His answers also make clear that, for all the brutality associated with his filmmaking, he remains interested in understanding why his characters behave as they do, and how different their lives might have been under other circumstances.
Master’s death may bring his rule to an end, but it does little to change what his organisation has done to the people who grew up within it. And although the violence that follows is often brutal, Park’s comments make us wonder how differently these characters might have turned out if they had been given the chance to grow up like ordinary children.
Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler
Featured image courtesy of Park Hoon-jung
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