Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a review from someone who came from down below... those depths that have every single contributor to AICN as well as every tie-wearing studio minion shaking in their loafers... They don't like to speak of it, rather calling it "The Place We Do Not Name." That's right... we have CurryIce from the (gulp) land of talkbacks here with a rather excited review of a Korean flick called A BITTERSWEET LIFE. Ol' CurryIce saw it at the Fantasy Film Fest in Germany and just flipped for it. Here's hoping his own kind don't smell us on him... good god, he could be mauled! Enjoy the review, but beware of some spoilers!
Hi Harry and AICN staff.
Here CurryIce again back from the German FantasyFilmfest which is happening in Frankfurt right now and will end in Berlin at the end of this month.
I was at the screening of the Korean movie "A Bittersweet Life" today in a full packed theater and it was just awesome.
The film was directed by Kim Jee-Woon who made the Horror flick "A Tale of Two Sisters" and "The Quiet Family"! Harry, i don't know if you have already seen "The Quiet Family" from the 90s but if you want to see the actor of "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" Song Kang-Ho and star of "Oldboy" Choi Min-Sik playing together in the same movie and making funny performances then you have to watch it. It's a very well made dark humor movie and i really recommend it to everybody.
Now to the one of the best Korean movie i have seen in the past years next to SFMV, Oldboy, StrokesOfFire, Spring,Summer,Fall,..., Brotherhood, ATaleOfTwoSisters and Silmido: A Bittersweet Life THIS MOVIE KICKS ASS!!!
Lee Byung-Hun (the same guy who played in Park Chan-Wook's JSA) plays Seon-Woo the sidekick of this gangster boss whose name i've totally forgotten so i'll just call him BOSS alright? So the whole group operates in this luxury hotel called "Crown".
Seon-Woo is the most loyal and proficient sidekick who executes every job with most professionality and without any mistakes. He worked 7 years "like a dog" for his BOSS. There is this other sidekick whose name i also forgot so i'll call him the wicked henchman on my review. Now while Seon-Woo is more the cold hearted introverted type of guy accomplishing every job without any flaws the wicked henchman is more the extroverted guy who's a little less reliable but who's not dumb and very brutal.
There are two scenes which are not really necessary for the story but important for the film because they demonstrate that Seon-Woo is a "don't fuck with me"-guy. The first one is the opening sequence where he's asking three assholes in the hotel to leave until he counts to three. As you can imagine they don't give a shit and Seon-Woo smashes them easily. The other sequence is the one where those stupid "we have seen too much The Fast and the Furious" guys in their tuned car annoy him while he's driving but he stays cool until he accelerates and manages to stop them. And here he shows again his fighting skills and Tom Cruise' Vincent (Collateral) can go home when he sees this. While Oh Dae-Su in Oldboy was the punching tank here Seon-Woo is the high speed kicking master.
Now BOSS has a very important job for him during his business trip to Shanghai. He reveals to him that he has a very young girl named Hee-Soo and he suspectes that she betrays him with another young boy. So he instructs his best enforcer to take care of her and observe while he's in Shanghai and in case that she has another man and sleeps with him Seon-Woo HAS TO KILL BOTH of them. The reason why BOSS wants Seon-Woo do this job is not only his loyalty or proficiency but he trusts him in knowing that he's still a child when it comes to love. He's never fallen in love with somebody.
BOSS flies to Shanghai and during the whole "i have to take care and observe Hee-Soo" period there is this problem between the wicked henchman and a chairman called Baek. Baek wants to make business with BOSS who's not really interested. So wicket henchman has to solve this problem in telling him that they're not interested but he is not good in that so Seon-Woo handles it and talks to him in a clear and harsh way and Baek doesn't like it at all and think it was very ruthless and demands an apology from Seon-Woo. So Baek sends his own henchman who wears this thick glasses and a fisher hat and meets Seon-Woo in a garage and wants him to tell the three words "I apologise you" or something like that which was shown in the subtitle and Seon-Woo sends him back with the three words "Fuck You Asshole". You can imagine that Baek won't be very pleased with that when he hears that from the fisher hat guy.
Back to Hee-Soo: This beautiful girl played by the same actress from "Volcano High" is a Cello player and Seon-Woo falls in love for the first time in his life. There are only a few and very short occasions where they're together like when she asks him to go for a lunch because she doesn't want to eat alone or when he sees her playing Cello in the recording room. In that time his love arouses but she doesn't know it of course. Then he discovers Hee-Soo and her boyfriend in her house and is very close to kill them as his BOSS told him but he just can't 'cause he likes this girl too much and tells them instead of being killed they should seperate and never meet each other again. Hee-Soo is fucking mad at him but sees that there's no other way. BOSS returning from Shanghai finds everything out and is very very angry.
Baek is pissed about Seon-Woo who didn't apologise to him so his Fisher hat guy and his helper from Thailand (or another Asian country...i'm not sure but they looked very Thai) beats him up very hard in his apartment and brings him to chairman Baek and before fisher hat can butcher him with all kind of butcher tools Baek gets a phone call and Seon-Woo is delivered to a courtyard in front of a warehouse and BOSS and his guys awaits him already. BOSS wants an HONEST answer which he doesn't get. So BOSS is very very disappointed by his most loyal sidekick who's almost like his son and let the wicked henchman and all the other followers do "the rest". Now while BOSS is in the car on his way (to the Hotel i guess) the wicked henchman and all the other follower of BOSS do this very very bad thing to Seon-Woo's hand and another thing which i won't spoil it to you. But BOSS gives him another chance in talking to him through the mobile phone to tell him the real "truth" why Seon-Woo hasn't kill Hee-Soo and he gets again only a silence. And now this film delivers an adrenaline splashing fight scene between Seon-Woo and the guys of BOSS.
This is so fucking intense and fast edited that i'm pretty sure that many people will like this perhaps even more than the hallway fight in Oldboy. While the hallway scene in Oldboy was a one Dollyshot without a cut and had this slow doggedness which was a kind of a symbol for the situation of Oh Dae-Su here it's a fast paced fight/escape scene with many cuts concentrating more in thrill and high adrenaline. This guy kicks, punches and uses burning sticks and even a mobile phone battery to fight off and can escape after a crazy action scene with a car where he literally drags a few guys along the wall. Definitely one of the best scenes in the whole movie. And i can't wait to see this part again. At this moment the revenge part of the film begins and Seon-Woo has to deal with Baek the chairman and BOSS who orders a few guys to shoot him to death. Seon-Woo contacts arm dealers to buy hand guns and automatics and this is the most hilarious part of the movie where i laughed my ass off. The movie makes a short comic break and here you have this arm dealer who deals with Russians and his two helpers a Korean (the actor who played the prison owner in Oldboy) and a Russian. And believe me, this was so funny that i couldn't stop laughing when this part ended in shootings and dead corpses.
Now being armed with many top weapons from Russia (including an automatic used by the KGB) the movie ends in the Hotel with a great intense showdown involving shooting guns, automatic weapons and AKs. I won't spoil everything but it get's very poetic where the film ends with a Buddhist parable which beautifully illustrates Son-Woo's sad situation about his love and his tragic fate.
A Bitter Sweet Life is a fast paced and stylish action noir film with a very very beautiful production design and a great camera work which is perhaps even better than in Oldboy (it's not surprising considering the camera work in "A Tale Of Two Sisters") It's not as complex as Oldboy and vengeance is not the critical subject like in Oldboy. It hasn't the rich subtexts as Park Chan-Wook's movie and doesn't require much brain storming. And the story runs straight from point A to point B. Nevertheless it's smart, clever and a fucking great revenge flick with many funny moments! This is a totally different film than Oldboy but many will make comparisons which is not quite appropriate but i can understand when it's inevitable. This movie was one of the best films i've seen this year. I don't know when or if this is gonna be released in the US but if you get any chance to see it. See it.
Your reader and talkbacker,
CurryIce
