Depicting multiple faces of reality, Beasts Clawing at Straws tracks down the root of human greed.
Diligently working at a sauna, Jung-man (Bae Sung Woo) sees a bag of money left by a customer. He takes care of his mother with dementia together with his wife Young-sun (Jin Kyung).
Tae-young (Jung Woo Sung) is an officer at the port, and he has a debt to pay as his girlfriend, Yeon-hui (Jeon Do Yeon), left with the money. Yeon-hui turns out to be the boss of Mi-ran (Shin Hyun Been), a worker in her bar who has an abusive husband. Mi-ran meets with a customer, Jin-tae (Jung Ga Ram) who is an illegal alien.
Convincing her to leave her abusive husband, Jin-tae attempts to kill Mi-ran’s husband but runs over another person. As the situation gets messy, Mi-ran decides to kill Jin-tae, and Yeon-hui assists her in cleaning her tracks.
Dog-Eat-Dog World
Yeon-hui also helps Mi-ran in plotting her husband’s death for his insurance. However, Yeon-hui tricks Mi-ran, killing her and throwing her chopped body. She tries to come back to Tae-young, asking for help in fleeing the country, but Tae-young runs with her money.
Escaping from there, Tae-young leaves the bag of money inside the locker of the sauna. He gets run over by a truck after running away from the debt collectors. The debt collectors along with Yeon-hui search for the bag of money, and find it in Jung-man’s.
Despite succeeding in retrieving the bag of money, Yeon-hui is stabbed by “Catfish”, Doo-man, the loan shark’s henchman. Young-sun, who is a janitor at the port, opens the locker, and sees the bag of money.
Marcie Line watched Beasts Clawing at Straws on Viu
Movie Rating: 
Beasts Clawing at Straws Movie Peak Points
Connected Stories of Different Individuals
The movie has a lot of characters, and they are all somehow connected as the movie progresses. It just starts with a diligent worker from a sauna named Jung-man, but as it progresses we see his wife, his mother, and their family’s set-up.
We also get to see a port officer named Tae-young, and how he’s stuck with a loan shark after his girlfriend Yeon-hui runs away with his money. And then, Yeon-hui has a worker named Mi-ran, who is eligible to claim her husband’s insurance.
All these characters become connected with the bag of money, and that bag’s presence in their individual situations show what that sum of money could bring into their life. Moreover, it also highlights the difference in their motives in life, and also how desperate humans can be.
Division into Six Meaningful Chapters
Six chapters comprise the movie, and if those are all put together, one would be able to draw a big picture of human’s desperation for money. Because of debt and pressuring loan sharks, there are humans who could scam, steal, and kill others. These themes are weaved to build a big reflection of why and how humans lead themselves to such situations.
Reflection of Various Social Issues
Several characters in the movie were able to represent different existing social issues. Mi-ran, who works as an escort, is abused by her husband, and Jin-tae tells her how difficult it is for people to get out of such a cycle, bearing some truth in real life. In Jin-tae’s situation, he is an illegal immigrant, and with his death, like what Yeon-hui said, it is easy to cover a murder case as long as it is an illegal alien. Moreover, that fact alongside Tae-young who is a port officer, also highlights the presence of corruption in these organizations.
Jung-man and Young-sun represent persevering laborers, who are sometimes the victims of unjust labor practices. The boss of Jung-man is heartless with his employee’s situation. The boss’ decision to fire Jung-man leads Jung-man into becoming desperate, taking the bag of money.
Beasts Clawing at Straws Movie Musings
For the first parts of the movie, I was wondering where I should focus, but following the plot, I realized the possibility of the characters’ stories becoming interconnected. The divisions per chapter encourage viewers to think deeply about what the scenes in those chapters mean, and at the latter part of the movie, one would realize that the plot was nonlinear.
Jung Ga Ram as Jin-tae in this movie presents his new side as an actor. His role is very different from the one he had in Love Alarm. Jeon Do Yeon’s acting is outstanding as she is able to radiate her character’s ruthless and strong image.
The root of conflict in the movie is money, specifically the bag that contains money. Intertwining that conflict are the problems of debt, illegal immigrants, corruption, abuse, and unjust labor practices. Relating all those variables together helps viewers to realize how these all play together because of human desperation.
All of their desperation is an attempt to escape their current situation in life. However, seeing to whom the bag of money ended, we could say they were the characters that had no blood in their hands, and harmed no one directly.
Stealing is wrong, but considering Young-sun and Jung-man’s attitude in work, the ending may have implied that the money may have found its way to the people who deserve it.
Beasts Clawing at Straws is now available on Viu and iQiyi for selected regions.
Photos: B.A. Entertainment
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