FiRST MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2005filmreviewby movie fans for movie fansEDITED BY JASON F. JOHNSONBITTERSWEET LIFEOur new hero, Lee Byung-hun.
Lee Byung-hun justifies his thugs. And how.
^ click to enlarge captures
MOVIE SPECS_____________________________________________________________
Director: Kim Ji-woon
Cast:
Lee Byung-hun Sun-woo
Shin Min-a Hee-soo
Kim Young-chul Mr. Kang
Hwang Jeong-min President Baek
Running Time: 120 minutes
Distributor: InnoForm Media
Release Date: August 18
Rated: TBA
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The character Lee Byung-hun play here, Sun-woo, is the man every teenage boys dream of being and many older gentlemen would like to have been. He's a gangster, specifically an enforcer, but that's not really important. To him it's just like any other, and one he does particularly well. At one point in the film someone asks what it's like being an enforcer, and he answers 'That's not me'. And he's right. He is a man of honour in a profession without honour. He is a man devoted to his craft (martial arts) surrounded by a bunch of dumb, lazy thugs. He is a man of good habits living in a dangerous, licentious nightworld. What he is is a cowboy. A samurai. He's too good for the world. He's doomed.
This is truly the most charismatic performance we have seen in 2005, and there have been some good ones (Mickey Rourke's Marv in Sin City and the penguins in March of the Penguins spring immediately to mind).
Sometimes an actor shares so much of his own life force with a character that it's almost as if he creates a new human being, as if this fictional person on the cinema screen should be given honorary Earth citizenship. The camera almost never strays from Lee Byung-hun for the entire two-hour runningtime of the picture, and not once during those 120 minutes do we think: there is a movie character. What we think is: there is a man. And what a man.
When we are first introduced to Sun-woo, he is immaculately groomed, dressed in a black suit and tie, and enjoying a designer pastry in an upscale restaurant. A waiter informs him that he is needed elsewhere, but before attending to his business (what could it be?), he lingers over his desert, savoring a final spoonful. Perhaps he intuits that this will be the last moment of peace he will ever know. There follows a scene in which Sun-woo, with terrific lan, kicks the crap out of three lowlifes who unfortunately turns out to be the underlings of Baek, a powerful gang leader. Baek asks for an apology from Sun-woo for thumping his men, but none is forthcoming. Can you smell trouble? Unfortunately, Sun-woo can't. It's his middle name.
And speaking of trouble, we haven't even gotten to the girl yet. She's Hee-soo (played by the delectable Shin Min-a) and she's the girlfriend of Sun-woo's boss, Kang. When Kang goes away on business, he asks Sun-woo to look after the girl, but with a minor addendum that Sun-woo should kill her if he finds her fooling around with another guy. Sun-woo has no problem with this in principle, but then when he inevitably finds Hee-soo cheating, he doesn't have the heart to dispatch her. Not after she smiled at him so nicely when she was playing her cello. And besides, just look at her pretty hair! If you couldn't smell trouble before, you should be able to catch a whiff now.
Sun-woo's two lapses in judgment -1) failing to apologize to Baek and 2) failing to kill Hee-soo prove to be fateful, and perhaps even fatal (we won't tell). Baek hires a sociopathic butcher in a fisherman's hat to torture an apology out of Sun-woo. Kang, no less sadistic, orders Sun-woo to be buried alive. As it happens, Sun-woo endures both ordeals over the course of one-hellish night, and let's just say he wakes up the next morning on the wrong side of the bed. This gloomy gus wants revenge, the bloodier the better.
The irony that Sun-woo's principles lead to his persecution will not be lost on anyone who has ever suffered under an insane boss or an incompetent teacher or an immoral family member. It is not Sun-woo's sins or faults that lead to his downfall, but rather his virtues. Perhaps he could be seen as arrogant, but we see his arrogance as a form of innocence; he just wants to do his job well and be a relatively decent man without having to play the silly make that stupid games that people play. All we can say is, we feel your pain, dude, and we're sure that there are many other like-minded souls who will as well. At least we hope so. Misery loves company.
Bittersweet Life reminds us yet again why gangsters films have always been and will always be popular: gangsters get to act as tough as we all feel on the inside, but can never let anyone see on the outside. We'd like to personally thank Lee Byung-hun for the catharsis.
AT A GLANCE_____________________________________________________________
SYNOPSISSun-woo is an enforcer for a mob-owned hotel. He runs into trouble with a rival gang when he ejects one of his more unruly members from the premises. He gets in even more trouble when he baby-sits his boss' girl, and lets her get away with cheating. Sun-woo's problems culminate in one hellish night, during which he is tortured and buried alive. After a miraculous and spectacular escape, he vows revenge.
DEMOGRAPHICSBittersweet Life will attract primarily young filmgoers who are hip to all things K, and should ultimately win a small cult following.
SEE ALSOThere are elements that remind us very much of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. There are also dashes of Sergio Leone and John Woo. Also slightly similar to the Korean film OldBoy.
THE VERDICT_____________________________________________________________
Lee gives an amazingly charismatic performance in this super-stylish K-flick. Awesome. RATING 4 stars out of 5
Credits: Singapore's FiRST Magazine - issue 035, September 2005. Captures courtesy of Lucy @ LBH.SG
always & forever!
I too had my misgivings initially about watching this film given the lukewarm reception it got in korea, and was seemingly equally panned by critics, but relying solely from experience, a LBH movie never disappointed so I decided to give it a chance 2 weekends ago, and just as well that I did, because indeed the movie added more reasons to why this guy has wormed his way into my heart quite unexpectedly and in such a short time too! 
