Bogota: City of the Lost

Story: It's the year 1997 and the financial crisis in Asia forces Song Kook-hee's (Song Joong-ki) parents to go to Colombia. It was actually only supposed to be a temporary stay as they wanted to continue their journey to the USA, but as soon as they arrive, the family is robbed of all their savings. Kook-hee's father seeks help from Park Jang-so (Kwon Hae-hyo), with whom he was in Vietnam. However, he does not really manage to help him. But at least Sook-hee is able to find a job through Park's connections. Park is the number one contact person in the Korean neighborhood as he has contacts at customs. That's helpful because most Korean migrants earn money by selling smuggled goods, especially clothing. In the corrupt country, Park can make sure that the goods arrive without enormous customs costs. Kook-hee turns out to be a diligent worker and so Soo-yeong (Lee Hee-jun), an important man under Park, takes the young man under his wing. But something goes wrong during one of the next smuggling orders, and Soo-yeong can prove that he also knows how to bribe the police and customs to set everything right again. Soon, Soo-yeong plans to move out of his boss's shadow, though, and asks Kook-hee for help. The two do quite well and act pretty smart during their undertaking, as they don't forget to pay Park as well. But an internal power struggle seems inevitable.

Review: If most gangster stories have already been told, why not just move the location to another country? That seems to have been the idea for "Bogota: City of the Lost". While in movies such as "Escape from Mogadishu" the plot itself has something special in store and is therefore quite memorable, this is not the case here. Basically, it's the same story as we've already seen in "A Dirty Carnival" for example and countless other movies. The rise of a small-time crook who tries not to lose his humanity but then has to make increasingly tougher decisions. Besides its unusual setting, the movie eventually does not offer anything new, and especially when it comes to the screenplay it does not manage to fully convince. Moreover, the movie does not play to its greatest strength: the theme of Korean immigrants who are forced (?) to keep their heads above water with dishonest work and therefore themselves become part of the problem that plagues Colombia, namely corruption and crime. Here, the story could have gone into much more detail, delving deeper into the hopes and fears of the people, but in the end, the movie sadly only focuses on the gangster plot.

Unfortunately, story-wise everything is very predictable. There are also several leaps a few years into the future when Kook-hee has worked his way up a bit in the gangster world. At first, the young man has no interest in entering the shady milieu, he does not even want to take a puff on a joint. But as we hear in an inner monologue, he suddenly starts to flirt with the idea of joining the gangster world and, without any apparent reason for urgency, flees from the police with a truck full of smuggled goods. It is unclear where this change of heart came from. Moments like this happen quite often and are proof of the half-baked script. And then there are the characters. Even though Song Joong-ki ("Space Sweepers") tries to give his character some nuances, the screenplay simply does not allow for any of that, instead Kook-hee stumbles from one gangster drama cliché into the next. It's also a pity that there is no chemistry between the characters. Something like a friendship with Soo-yeong, played by Lee Hee-jun ("Badland Hunters"), should develop so that it can later be exploited on a dramatic level as he and Kook-hee become rivals - but nothing of the kind happens.

The list of weaknesses concerning the characters go on endlessly. At some point, Kook-hee's boss powerlessly steps into the background, and Kook-hee's mother and similar people are there too ... kind of. We just know absolutely nothing about them. If something dramatic happens inevitably, it simply leaves us completely cold. And we can hardly follow the protagonist on an emotional level either because we know nothing about his wishes, goals and hopes. In addition, the Koreans generally come off rather badly. Honest work seems like an impossible thing for them. Since they fled their home country after the financial crisis, it is also obvious (and hinted at here and there) that they fled from their debts too. So, they are exactly the kind of immigrants that Colombia doesn't need at all. And that brings us to the next point: Even though the movie is mainly set around 2000, you have to ask yourself whether you should portray the country in such an one-sided manner. Everything and everyone is corrupt, and there is not much else we get to see from the Colombians, as the Koreans prefer to stay among themselves. If you expected some kind of cultural exchange or anything like that, you will be disappointed.

It would have been very interesting if director Kim Seong-je ("Minority Opinion") had chosen a socially critical tone, or if he had at least woven Bogota as a filming location into his story properly. But we almost get no insight into the Colombian way of life, so in the end, the only thing we know about the Colombians is that they constantly pass by on motorbikes stealing something from people. Visually, "Bogota: City of the Lost" doesn't really offer anything special either, but at least it mostly refrains from adding the typical yellow tint movie makers use for South America. Nevertheless, it is still a pity that there are only very few instances when we can actually catch a glimpse of the colorful life on the street. So, the movie proves to be a typical gangster drama that might just as well have been shot in the Philippines, Thailand, or South Korea for that matter. In addition, it is really annoying that you don't know who you are supposed to root for and what exactly it is that things are supposed to lead up to. Events develop as expected for the genre, and the ending somehow leaves you unsatisfied too, simply because everything runs according to the well-known gangster formula. So, the only question left is whether Kook-hee survives in the end or not. But do we really care?

What the movie also lacks is a decent level of suspense. There are no action scenes, apart from a few uninspired chases, and there are no cleverly designed intrigues either. Of course, there are one or two betrayals, but as mentioned before, it leaves us pretty much unaffected. It's almost a miracle that the flick doesn't feel too long with its almost 110 minutes. The reason for this may be the fact that the movie is basically well-produced, and the actors also make an effort to do a good job. The whole thing only lacks the foundation of a decent script. In the end, "Bogota: City of the Lost" may be nice genre food for all those who are enthusiastic about gangster dramas, but the movie lacks personality and a real soul, which is all the more surprising since the setting would have offered the best conditions to create more than just another forgettable genre representative. However, your hopes might not have been that high anyway, because since the movie is a Netflix production, things were probably somehow ill-fated anyway ...

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