Let’s say you take a poll that asks most Korean Cinema fans about their favorite movies or TV shows in the last decade or so. It’s almost guaranteed that you would have a lot of people putting down shows like Squid Game or Parasite as their answer. It wouldn’t be a surprising answer either because of the global impact those shows had. Yet, there’s a really overlooked Korean movie that would give them a run for their money.
That movie is Extreme Job. Released in 2019, this wonderful film explores a unique concept: sometimes the best comedies are born from relatively simple ideas. The premise of the movie follows a bunch of cops so bad at their jobs they accidentally become chicken tycoons. This movie broke all sorts of records in Korea, and it’s easy to see why when you watch it. The kind of comedy here would make just about anyone laugh — from your grandparents to that friend who “doesn’t do subtitles.”
What Made a Cop Movie About Selling Chicken So Hilarious and Relatable
So, why was Extreme Job so funny and relatable? The very short and simple answer to that question is that most people who saw the film, saw a version of themselves in the movie. For instance, the washed-up narcotics squad is led by Chief Go (Ryu Seung-ryong). He’s basically like that one manager who’s just trying to make it to retirement without further blots on his record. The rest of his squad — Detective Jang (Lee Ha-nee), Detective Ma (Jin Seon-kyu), Detective Young-ho (Lee Dong-hwi), and Detective Jae-hoon (Gong Myung) — all look like the equally unbothered people who work under that manager.
They all have the same overarching goal: to save their jobs. So what do they do? They buy a failing chicken shop across from a drug den just to spy on the gang running the drug den. What no one, not even the cops, saw coming was how delicious the chicken would be and how successful the “fake business” would become. Suddenly, these cops who can’t catch criminals are dealing with favorable Yelp reviews and delivery orders during their stakeouts.
What makes this comedy slap hard is the way director Lee Byeong-heon handles it. He avoids making it look like someone is reading punchlines off a cue card. Instead, he allows hilarious moments like when the cops are trying to take surveillance photos while dealing with the chaos of the lunch rush to drive the comedy. At that point, you’re not just laughing at them, you’re also laughing with that part of you that’s also just winging it through life. All in all, there are several elements of this movie that sort of gets that we’re all just trying to find that one thing we don’t completely suck at.
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How Timing and Marketing Stopped a Korean Blockbuster from Going Global
Before we explore why this movie just went quietly under the radar globally, let’s look at its impressive numbers in Korea. Just a few weeks after release, this movie sold 16 million tickets. When you break it down, it comes down to the fact that around one out of three Koreans bought tickets to go see the movie. What’s even more surprising is that it cumulatively grossed more than $120 million at the box office to become the highest-grossing South Korean film at the time of its release. That’s mighty impressive for a movie that’s more or less about failed cops selling fried chicken.
So why didn’t this movie blow up everywhere? The first, most realistic reason for this is timing. For context, Extreme Job was released around three months before Parasite won the Oscar, and that somehow made the rest of the world believe that Korean cinema was only about dark social commentary. Unsurprisingly, distributors were more interested in getting in on the action that got the Oscar, and less so about a movie that featured everyday Korean humor and chicken recipes.
That leads us to the second issue: marketing. Humor, especially the local kind, can struggle to travel across borders. Not to go all academic on you, but an article titled Cultural Boundaries in Humor Across Chinese and Western Comedy Film, dives into this exact phenomenon. It boldly states that “… while some comedic devices may cross cultural lines, others—such as wordplay, political satire, and culturally specific references—often result in misinterpretation when transplanted across cultures.” While there’s no specific source pointing to that about Extreme Job, it’s plausible that distributors didn’t trust that the local humor in this film, the kind that made Korean audiences howl with laughter, would land with international audiences. But the secret’s getting out. Thanks to streaming, this movie’s having its moment in the late-night “what should we watch?” conversations. It’s like that hidden spot that doesn’t look like much from the outside but ends up being your new favorite place.
So, if you’re tired of rewatching the same Hollywood comedies, give this one a spin on Apple TV+. It’s loud, funny, and surprisingly relatable.
