Veteran

Veteran (베테랑) is a 2015 South Korean action comedy written and directed by Ryoo Seung-wan. It stars Hwang Jung-min as Seo Do-cheol, a veteran police detective who is rough around the edges and cannot be bought. The film opens with a comic undercover sting in which Seo poses as a pompous rich husband trying to buy a Mercedes for his "wife," Miss Bong.

The main story begins when a truck driver named Bae and his coworkers are fired for joining a union and cheated out of their pay by a subcontractor. Bae's search for his wages brings him face to face with Jo Tae-oh (Yoo Ah-in), the sadistic third-generation heir of the powerful Sinjin Group. When Bae ends up in a supposed suicide, Seo starts to suspect the chaebol's world of privilege.

Tae-oh's handlers keep trying to cover up the damage his impulses cause, and each clumsy attempt makes things worse. The film switches between slapstick, drama and hard-hitting action as a detective with little money but plenty of pride goes after a man who has never had to answer for anything.

Ryoo Seung-wan wanted to make a crowd-pleasing, black-and-white stand on class division and social injustice. The film holds up two kinds of power against each other. The chaebol heir has money, lawyers and fixers. The working detective has only his dignity, his gao (face, or pride). Veteran argues that integrity cannot be bought, and that the privileged are not above the law as long as someone refuses to be intimidated.

Jo Tae-oh is based on a real incident. The director said he looked into the kind of people involved rather than the event itself. He wanted audiences to leave unable to say whose story it was, so the villain works as a portrait of a whole class of untouchable heirs rather than one person.

The most common reading sees Veteran as a populist fantasy of justice. It is a satisfying catharsis because real chaebol scandals rarely end with such a clear reckoning. Critics noted that its black-and-white stand on class is both its power and its limit: the film offers emotional release more than structural critique.

Veteran came out during growing public anger in South Korea over the abuses of chaebol heirs. It drew about 13.4 million admissions and roughly US$92 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing Korean films ever. It also won Ryoo Seung-wan the Blue Dragon Award for Best Director.

Its catchphrases, especially \"어이가 없네\" and \"우리가 돈이 없지 가오가 없냐,\" spread into everyday Korean speech. The press credited much of the film's crowd-pleasing, cider-like satisfaction to its dialogue. The film's success helped build the popular genre of the anti-chaebol revenge story, and it led to the 2024 sequel I, the Executioner.

Audiences in Korea turned the film into a phenomenon with more than 13 million admissions. Reviewers praised Hwang Jung-min \"at his most puckish\" and Yoo Ah-in, who was \"thoroughly committed\" to his grotesquely entitled executive (Variety). Critics also noted that the switching between comedy and drama works seamlessly. Its punchy dialogue and cathartic takedown of a chaebol villain were also widely loved.

The main criticism is that its black-and-white treatment of class and injustice lacks nuance. The overall verdict is that it is a hugely entertaining, crowd-pleasing action comedy with a pointed social edge.