Film: A Bittersweet Life
Release date: 24th April 2006
Certificate: 18
Running time: 120 mins
Director: Kim Ji-woon
Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Kim Yeong-cheol, Mina Shin, Kim Roe-ha, Hwang Jeong-min
Genre: Crime/Action/Thriller/Drama
Studio: Tartan
Format: DVD
Country: South Korea
A tale of love, loyalty, betrayal and revenge, A Bittersweet Life offers a critically acclaimed and award-winning insight into South Korea’s underworld.
Kim Sun-woo is a stoic criminal tasked with spying on his boss’ new girlfriend, Min-gi, while he is away, with the express instruction to kill her if she is seen with any other men. Meanwhile, gang leader Baek and Sun-woo’s chief rival Moon-suk target Sun-woo after a confrontation between the two crime families.
After discovering that the girl he is watching is seeing another man, Sun-woo contravenes his orders, as well as his better judgment, and spares the girl’s life. Sun-woo’s boss returns, discovers his employee’s indiscretion and promptly gives his lieutenant up to the rival gang.
Beaten, humiliated and buried alive, Sun-woo survives to take revenge on all that have betrayed him…
A delicate human drama punctuated by extended scenes of brutal, stylised violence, A Bittersweet Life is one man’s journey towards his inevitable death.
The action drama has become popular in eastern cinema over the last decade, the films of Chinese director Johnny To, in particular, juxtaposing slow burn emotional drama with balletic, Woo-esque violence. The violence within these films often serves to be a cathartic release, designed as a bloody conclusion to any tension built throughout the story, a stylish deus ex machina to tie up (or shoot) any loose ends. In Kim Ji-woon’s revenge thriller, the abrupt outbursts of choreographed violence are a direct representation of the central character’s volatile nature.
The film’s opening act is a sombre affair, at odds with the carnage that will later ensue. Hopeful moments between Sun-woo and Min-gi are undercut by the futility of their relationship - Sun-woo seeing a future with this woman, but knowing he will never be able to live it.
Kim Sun-woo is a wonderfully engaging character, and Lee Byung-hun is a magnetic screen presence. A man of few words and whose reactionary nature incurs the wrath of a rival gang boss at the film’s opening, and later causes him to disregard a direct order from his boss. Sun-woo is rage buried under an ingrained discipline that is counteracted by a woman he loves and knows he must kill. A man of barely contained emotion in a world where such a thing is forbidden, it’s Sun-woo’s anger and grief that drives the film.
Elsewhere, Kim Roe-ha impresses as the envious Mun-suk and Hwang Jeong-min’s psychotic Baek is comically OTT - all bang and bluster in contrast to Sun-woo’s smooth skills. Aside from this, the cast is disappointingly skeletal, the story choosing to focus almost exclusively on Sun-woo, a man who punches more than he speaks.
The action itself is highly impressive, from a lightning fast skirmish in a restraint booth to an epic final showdown, Kim Ji-woon and fight choreographer Heong Ji-jun (who tragically died in 2008 on the set of The Good The Bad The Weird) craft some truly beautiful set pieces. The climactic shoot out, in particular, is shot and scored like a Leone western, with Sun-woo playing out his last moments as the tragic anti-hero.
A bold mix of genres and styles, A Bittersweet Life shifts from western gangster flick to eastern crime fable, all the way to bloody revenge drama and back again. The film is often tonally muddled, yet it retains coherence thanks to Kim Ji-woon’s confident direction and Byung-hun’s charismatic lead. KT
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