Dalkomhan insaeng

Plot synopsis:
Kim Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) is a high ranking mobster and enforcer for Kang (Kim Yeong-cheol), a cold and calculating crime boss to whom he is unquestionably loyal. The two share concerns over business tensions with Baek Dae-sik (Hwang Jung-min), a son from a rival family, which is when Kang assigns Sun-woo what is perceived to be a simple errand while he is away on a business trip — to shadow his young mistress, Hee-soo (Shin Min-ah), whom he fears is having an "affair" with another man, giving Sun-woo the mandate to kill her (and her paramour) if he manages to discover it. As he performs his duty — following Hee-soo, and escorting her to a music recital one day — he becomes quietly enthralled by the girl's beauty and innocence as glimpses into his lonely, empty personal life become more prevalent. When he does come to discover Hee-soo's lover directly in her home, he fiercely beats him and prepares to inform Kang, but his attraction to her causes him to hesitate. He thus spares the two on the condition that they no longer see each other again, earning him Hee-soo's enmity.
Meanwhile, Sun-woo continues to be embroiled in personal business with Baek Dae-sik over having beaten up several of his henchmen earlier for overstaying their welcome at the hotel. He is then threatened by one of his enforcers to apologize, but he adamantly refuses, fueled by his frustrations over Hee-soo. As he relaxes in his apartment later one night, he is suddenly kidnapped by Baek's men to be tortured, but before they can do so they receive new orders via phone call and he is abruptly carried off to Kang, who has returned from overseas and has found out about his attempted cover-up of Hee-soo's affair. Kang's men torture him into confessing why he lied until he is left alone to think about his answer. A daring but messy escape follows, after which Sun-woo plans his revenge.
Help from one of Sun-woo's loyal men provides him with money and new clothes to go about his plan: he secretly delivers Hee-soo a gift to make amends and sets up a meeting with some local arms dealers, but as they are affiliated with Kang's organization he ends up killing them over a deal to buy a handgun — this incurs a vendetta with the brother of one of the dealers, who promptly sets out to find Sun-woo. He then goes on to set up a veiled rendezvous with Baek Jr. and kills him after a brief conversation, but he is viciously stabbed in the process. Bleeding, his violent shooting spree leads directly to Kang amidst one of his business meetings, where he vents bitterly over how badly he has been treated despite his seven years of service. Kang does not answer, and instead asks if Sun-woo's actions were directly because of Hee-soo. Sun-woo then shoots him, prompting a shootout with Baek Dae-sik's henchmen, who had quickly picked up his trail.
Sun-woo emerges as the only survivor of the battle with the arms dealer's brother finally catching up to him in the same room. Now dying from multiple gunshot wounds, he calls Hee-soo and pauses to reminisce on his only day with her, when he had escorted her to her music recital; in his memory, as he watches her play her cello, he finds himself overwhelmed with emotion and, in a rare moment of contentment, he smiles for the first time in the entire film. As he sheds a tear over this memory, the brother of the arms dealer executes him.
The film ends with a continuation of an earlier scene of Sun-woo looking out of a window at the city below him. After making sure he's alone, he begins to shadowbox his reflection in the glass, looking very happy.

Tags: revenge, violence

Review:
Not to mention the fact that it has the same sort of humor.Now, I am a film student who has actually gotten a lot of praise from students and teachers and whatnot for my first film project That's great and all, but after seeing this film I am reminded of what Steven Spielberg said after he saw The Godfather; "I guess I should quit now, because I will never make something this good." I am, in no way, comparing myself to Spielberg, I'm just describing the feeling of, "holy s***, this is amazing," and "wow, I could never do this ever"See this movie before you die Or before it gets remade..
The gun battles are reminiscent of Scarface, the martial arts are gritty and realistic, the poignancy of unrequited love is painful, there is a deep philosophical current that underlies this film, and the camera work is superb-but that's not what carries the movie.
Wholesale death, blood by the gallons, broken bones and multiple beatings with humongous pipe-wrenches, two-by-fours, and lead pipes are on order, right after a heaping dish of innocent love and a guy trying for once to do the right thing.The plot, well you see, it's like this: you can see everything coming a mile away, the movie plays it straight, and follows the exact path you know it will and the exact path you hope it will.
And he says no matter how dark and moody it may seem, his new film ''A Bittersweet Life (Talkomhan Insaeng)¡¯¡¯ is no exception.''This movie basically deals with relationship breakups resulting from small communication breakdowns,¡¯¡¯ Kim said during a news conference Monday after the preview screening of ''A Bittersweet Life.¡¯¡¯ Without calling it comedy exactly, sometimes audiences have to laugh at very serious or ironic situations, Kim said.Kim has shown his unique morbid sense of humor in previous movies such as ''The Quiet Family,¡¯¡¯ a black comedy about a family who kill visitors to their cottage, ''The Foul King,¡¯¡¯ a comic drama about an amateur wrestler, and one horror contribution work for the omnibus film ''Three.¡¯¡¯ Kim is also behind ''A Tale of Two Sisters,¡¯¡¯ the psychological horror film that became a summer hit in 2003.''A Bittersweet Life,¡¯¡¯ starring Lee Byung-hun from ''Everybody Has a Little Secret¡¯¡¯ and Shin Mina from ''Madeleine,¡¯¡¯ portrays the desperate and brutal revenge of Sun-woo (played by Lee) after he is expelled from his gang and comes close to being killed by his boss.Lee Byung-hun is a hit-man who falls for the girlfriend of his boss in the stylishly violent ¡°A Bittersweet Life.¡± Conventional ideas of causation are put into doubt in director Kim Jee-woon's twist on film noire.
''A Bittersweet Life (Talkomhan Insaeng)'' is what Korean critics are describing as ''Action Noire.'' In it, he tweaks the traditional Korean gangster story line, presenting a work with film noire undertones and stylish cinematography.Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) is a revenging dark angel dressed in black.
Gang leader Kang (Kim Young-cheol) assigns Sun-woo, his right-hand man, to watch after his nubile girlfriend/professional cellist Hee-soo (Shin Mina) while he is away and find out about the other guy with whom he suspects she is messing around.The plot is complicated by Sun-woo's existential decision to stray from the explicit instructions with which he is charged.
The music of the film was also wisely selected.Some -few- funny moments in the film help the viewer lighten up and get ready for what I saw as brilliantly directed fighting scenes, that neither bored me nor made me look away.At the end of the film, when the desciple was crying for "a dream that can never come true" I was absolutely sure that what I saw was nothing less than a true work of art..
In his previous film, the marks of originality, intellectual challenge and superb visual style hailed the possibility of a brave new voice in Korean cinema.A Bittersweet Life commences with similarly awesome photography and ambiance.
A tinkling piano (Chopin is used as part of the score) adds a delicate counterpoint to what we know will surely be an overload of violence and mayhem.Sun-Woo has served his boss, President Kang, faithfully for seven years and is now manager of Dolce Vita as well as Kang's right hand man.
When you sit back to watch this film, be prepared for a film that will open your mind,a film that will make you question humanity, and be prepared to be floored by a visual masterpiece which is rare by gangster movie standards.From the first few shots we are feasted with beautiful shots, angles and little references that are simply delightful.
The film then plays out to its darker half and we are shown the bitter side of life, which i wont go into and destroy for you.Everything about this film just...Works, even the martial arts scenes are well edited and seem clever, rather than tricking us with quick camera cuts, we get a raw and violent slice of brutal gangster revenge, which again simply delights in a strange bitter way.Simply put, A bittersweet life is simple plot, filmed and played exactly how it is meant to be, exactly how you want it to be.
Director Kim Jee-Woon has given us a gripping tale of revenge that treads a well worn path, yet does it with enough panache and style for us to forgive the occasional cliché.Byung-hun Lee plays Sun-woo, cooler-than-cool right-hand man to crime boss Kang, and manager of a swish hotel.
An extremely miffed Sun-woo then sets about exacting revenge on those responsible for trying to bump him off.With a plot that is neither as fresh or as clever as that other recent great Korean revenge drama, Oldboy, Kim Jee Woon's movie owes a lot of its success to lead actor Byung-hun Lee who puts in a confident performance that is the epitome of cool: dressed in a snappy suit, this hard-as-nails gangster is an unflappable fellow, even faced with what seems like certain death.As one would expect, there is plenty of violence, which slowly escalates until the inevitable final showdown between Sun-woo and Kang.
These scenes are handled with aplomb and will go down well with fans of action cinema.With an ending that is open to interpretation by the viewer, A Bittersweet Life leaves one thinking about the film long after the credits have rolled.
The trouble here is that stock characters are put through the motions of living stock feelings and the bodyguard ordered to watch his boss's girlfriend falls in love because the film demands it of him.
No other part of the film receives the care and attention of the scenes of violence.Yet by the end of it, KJW isn't satisfied with a crime flick where blood gushes out of bullet holes (of which it's a good one), he wants emotion to pour out of the finale.
The violence is gratuitous - shootings up close, bleeding by the buckets, hand-breaking, fist-fighting, at times making the audience cringe at too much crimson.But thumbs up for the action pieces, which were well choreographed, especially the escape fight scene (you must learn, never to give a few minutes to a hit-man), and the climatic shoot out finale.
This movie delivers on gangster action and torture scenes but flops on the love side of the story and the plot twists.
What I liked in this movie was some of fight scenes were a bit rough and crude and not as dance-like while others were very slick- it gave a good feel for the different ways a fight can go down.PLOT: A man's world goes all to crap in the gangster business and he can't seem to figure out why even though the answer is so obvious.
Not a lot of films in this genre leave a big smile on your face when they end this with its irony does.The other major difference would be feeling empathy, while Sundance and other festival showcase the hard hitting dramas of Hollywood, pick a Korean action film and it still would make you feel something.The cinematography is phenomenal it doesn't go crazy with color tones and doesn't care much about CGI its all really nicely thought out shots and well done stunts.
With ancient philosophy adding a final twist right at the end this is one the best foreign action films I have seen for a long time..
It would be perfect if you watch this movie, alone, at your home, or alone without your crew at the cinema.I enjoyed in the life of the main character, in my eyes he has perfect life, he has reverence from the people, he has perfect apartment, he didn't had time for love, but when he saw perfect silky skin, and perfect crazy soul, and the moment he saw her in the perfect classical music element, when she connected with her soul to the instrument and to the music, and when the gleam of light permeate her silky skin, he absolutely knew, that his life will be bittersweet, because he needed her more than life.The main reason, for watching this movie, alone, is that it makes you think like you are the main character in the "A Bittersweet Life".
And I was blown away!A Bittersweet Life quickly jumped to the top of my re-watch pile and I was telling everyone I knew about this awesome movie.Leading star, Jeong-min Hwang is Korea's Chow Yun Fat without a doubt.
Handsome, fantastic actor, and great at action (further seen in his Hollywood debut - the p*ss poor GI Joe movies), Hwang is a star!His role in A Bittersweet Life just confirms that, and instantly earns him fans as viewers become hooked by him in this incredible film.I can't praise it enough and don't want to give anything away.
Yet as Sun Woo's life begins to break down after a costly mistake, the quality and drama quickly takes a backseat to the all too familiar genre of action and revenge.
I lived in South Korea for 3 years, and Lee Byung Hun who play Sun Woo is my favorite Korean actor - admittedly, I think he's very handsome, but I also think he has some genuine acting talent too - and that's why I had high hopes for Dalkomhan Insaeng.
Everything has been seen so many times.I must admit that this movie is real,close to the real life,it is not that the main character can beat 1000 guys with one kick,but..., who knows, maybe with some more fantastic fight scenes the movie would be more interesting.
To qualify my tastes, I like gangster/triad/yakuza films, and I love the new wave of genre-busting Korean films."Bittersweet Life" is the story of Sun-Woo, a workaholic enforcer who operates out of a hotel.
He seems like a person who is used to doing everything his boss tells him, but one job makes him hesitate, and the mafia goes after him.The way Sung-Woo's situation changes from being respected to hunted is expected yet perfectly subtle at the same time, and watching his character develop during the movie was rewarding.
Movie: A Bittersweet Life (18)Rating: 4/5I've previously said this: Kim Jee-Woon is my favourite South Korean director and Lee Byung-hun, my favourite South Korean actor.
A cinematic jewel from start to finish, A Bittersweet Life is a remarkable portrait of the lifestyle & ethical codes of Korean mobs & tells the story of a high-ranked mobster named Kim Sun-woo who has been extremely faithful to his boss, Kang.
When Kang asks him to keep an eye on his young mistress while he is out of town on a business trip & eliminate her if she is found dating someone else, Sun-woo ends up finding himself in an unwanted situation & makes a moral choice that turns his life upside down, setting in motion a chain of events that ends with an unforgettable finale.Kim Ji-woon's direction is slick & stylish from the opening moments and the film is brilliantly scripted too with Ji-woon properly weighing each sequence on paper before executing them on screen.
Guaranteed to please not only the gangster films' fans but almost every viewer, A Bittersweet Life is one of the best films of its year, one of the greatest Korean films of all time & one of world cinema's finest crime dramas that's as razor sharp in its approach as it is unforgiving in its climactic moments.A masterpiece, by all standards.
As a big fan of the current South Korean cinema who has seen the amazing vengeance thriller "I Saw The Devil", I was excited to watch an earlier collaboration of director Kim Jee-Woon and actor Lee Byung-Hun in this movie that got internationally known as "A Bittersweet Life".
The choreography is superb and you find yourself flinching at some of the fight scenes.I was impressed with the acting throughout and some of the cinematography was astounding.If you haven't been made aware of some of the excellent Korean movies around at the moment, i.e A Bittersweet Life, Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance to name a few, take my advice and see these films immediately!
The story is also very good and in some parts original, but sadly the movie in the final third I feel takes a bad turn and becomes a bit too John Woo for my liking (not that he's really all bad).
Action takes over too much and spoils what was a developing story line.Regardless, a good entertaining movie, which is worth watching alone for the setting, direction and main actor.
But very good action indeed.Although movie feels weak at points where the main character, who is shown to be very sharp and master of martial arts, under estimates the situation and opponents.
The basis of the plot line is revenge, in this case from both sides thou its the main character Sun-Woo you will be rooting for.There's also plenty of laughs in this film (if you like you're comedy a little darker) some of the best laughs coming from the villains, or the several ingenious fight scenes.The ending however may leave a few people confused I certainly took a couple of viewings before I understood.
This is a cool movie with great set pieces and good violent action scenes.
part KILL BILL,part LEON : THE PROFESSIONAL,.A BITTERSWEET LIFE is another greatness from kim jee woon,.now official to become one of my favorite director.he really can turn a well established genre (horror with A TALE OF TWO SISTERS,and now gangster),into something entirely different (well,not entirely,he's sometimes borrows one or two things from other movies,but still) and highly poetic.a must see it's hard to choose my favorite scene from the movie.from the opening scene,the torture scene,the 'violin watching' scene,the 'merchandise' shop scene,the last showdown,the ending,all is worth to be remembered.anyone please see this movie,and you won't gonna regret it.
Yes, it's another sometimes devastating Korean gangster story, made with all the slickness and style of far eastern cinema.It's a downbeat and depressing film that explores the very depths of the human condition, and I have to say that I found the main character's journey to be pretty upsetting.
Lee Byung-hun went on to bigger things after this (a Hollywood career and I SAW THE DEVIL) and it's no surprise, because he's excellent in the central role: extremely subtle and yet with his eyes brimming with feeling.As the title would indicate, A BITTERSWEET LIFE isn't a feel-good action film with the hero blasting away various well-dressed criminals: this is a crime film in which every action has a consequence, and you can guarantee there won't be a happy ending.
The underlying philosophical overtones didn't resonate that well with the plot.The French film 'Leon''s influence is clearly seen, and the simplicity of the plot, instead of making it different and visceral, finally acts against the movie.But with a director like Kim Jee-Won, after a movie like 'A Tale of Two Sisters', and an actor like Byung-Hun Lee, this is a Total disappointment.
When I first watched this film, it was incredible to find it as a Korean movie, especially a story about gangsters.
I could understand better what the director wanted to say in this film after watching it again with his commentaries.Many scenes depicting violence and fights are well placed in the film to describe subtle emotional changes of the hero (Byung-hun LEE) and the unexpected situation that he encounters.
Everything is believable, from the small things like the way in which the main character first falls in love with his boss's girlfriend because of the delicate curve of her neck and the way the main character fumbles with a gun for the first time while he tries to put it together, to the theme of revenge that this films is propelled by.The main character (Sun-Woo) has lived most of his life serving his 'Hyong-Nim' (Korean for boss in the gangster underworld).
The theme of revenge stems from this, as Mr.Kang feels like a betrayed father, with his underling, Sun-Woo protects his boss's girlfriend from getting caught cheating.
But, I feel that many viewers may be missing the twist at the end.By 'twist' I mean after Sun-Woo's death the film goes back to the beginning, revealing that he only fantasised the whole thing.
however the introduction of an extra character near the end scene was a bit confusing as we are not told who he is how he is related to the story ( well not in great detail ) i will be looking for other films from Korea and what i now call new cinema rather than world cinema, mainly because of the quality i spoke of earlier in directing, acting, cinematography, story and choreography.
At the start of the film, the audience is told a story about a disciple that awakes in tears, upon questioning by his Master as to why he is crying, the disciple replies - "Because the dream I had can't come true." I did not understand this story at first, but after you've watched 'A Bittersweet Life' you'll (hopefully) understand.Sun-Woo is a hotel manager as well as a feared mob enforcer.