The core premise—a mob boss teaming up with a cop—is where the film leans most heavily into fiction.
Manya Surve was a real-life gangster from Mumbai, India, who operated in the 1980s. He was known for his involvement in various crimes, including extortion, murder, and smuggling. Surve was eventually killed in an encounter with the police in 1988. is the gangster the cop the devil based on true story
The Real-Life Inspiration: South Korea's 2000s Serial Killers The core premise—a mob boss teaming up with
The film may feel like a true story for two reasons: Surve was eventually killed in an encounter with
The "Devil" of the title is a composite character, primarily inspired by two of South Korea's most infamous and prolific serial killers.
The most thrilling aspect of the movie—a massive gangster surviving an attack and launching a underworld manhunt—is where the film blends fact with folklore.
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil succeeds because it uses the skeleton of a true crime story to build a muscular action epic. The film asks us to imagine a world where a gangster is the lesser of two evils, and a cop must become a devil to catch a devil. While that specific scenario never happened in a Korean police station, the fact that it almost did—the fact that a real mob boss beat a real serial killer to a pulp—is exactly why the movie feels so terrifyingly plausible.