Kang Seon-Woo (Park Hee-Soon) is an expert at adultery. By this, we mean that he`s the go-to guy in his police department for criminal matters revolving around that misconduct. In fact, Seon-Woo is such an expert that he`s got a lucrative moonlighting investigation service on the side, churning out the won with his clueless sidekick Gi-poong (Kwang Soo). Naturally, there`s a beautiful lady involved, and this particular lass by the name of Kim Soo-jin (Yoon Jae) wants Kang Seon-Woo to expose the infidelities of her husband (Nam Yeong-gil). The water gets murky when Kang Seon-Woo realises that the `adulteress` (Park Si-yeon) he`s spying on bears the same name as his client, and that both femme fatales are not exactly what they seem.
Despite channeling the visuals of the noir investigative genre, The Scent makes it a point to channel hilarity over tension, which is a good thing given the anticlimactic reveal and overly convoluted plot. The film possesses dark visuals but its strength lies in its characters and its schizophrenic number of comedic turns; dead bodies turn up, corpses get buried, secrets get unveiled, but all these events are slathered with a thick dose of absurdity. The result is refreshingly tongue-in-cheek, to say the least, given the fact that most Korean films that this reviewer has experienced have tended towards the unreflectively melodramatic. There`s blood, dark humour and boobs aplenty for those looking for the gratuitously visceral, and the stars would have been charismatic enough to carry the show without these factors.
In terms of acting, Park Hee-Soon steals the show with his garish portrayal of Kang Seon-woo, a guy who`s eccentricities include mumbling when he talks and having a sort of nasal ingenuity when it comes to scent. Park Si-yeon has a riveting, prodigious talentâ€