A Bittersweet Life

"Master, is it the branches that are moving, or the wind?"
"That which moves is neither the branches nor the wind, it is your heart and mind."

Sun Woo, a unique character with a curious lifestyle - he's not only a valued gang member and the proprietor of a hotel bar, but also the right-hand man to the powerful gang leader, Mr. Kang.

When Kang suspects that his beautiful young mistress Hee Soo might be messing around with another man, he enlists Sun Woo's help to resolve the matter, commanding him to follow her around to see what information he can dig up. Sun Woo's orders are explicit: if he catches Hee Soo cheating, he is to execute her - no ifs ands or buts about it. However, when Sun Woo spies Hee Soo with her boyfriend, he makes a stunning decision, one that will have major consequences for all involved!

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• Channel 4 Film, by Saxon Bullock
  http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=153732&page=1
  Bookended by brief Buddhist parables and enhanced with an Ennio Morricone-style score, this is a visually stunning piece of work that sensibly relieves some of the story's bleakness with moments of black comedy, especially when Sun-Woon encounters a shambolic trio of gun smugglers. Everything builds towards the climactic showdown, with heavy echoes of Pulp Fiction and Get Carter, and while it's arguable that emotional depth and the laws of physics sometimes take a backseat to the superbly mounted action, this slick thriller stands as yet another example of Asian Cinema leaving Hollywood standing in the dust.


• Twitch DVD Review
  http://twitchfilm.net/archives/003044.html
  Its balancing of stylish and nihilistic violence with tremendously effective black comedy, the kind that never gets to its knees begging you to laugh but earns it with its uniqueness. Its beautiful melancholy hidden under the wah wah and the bang bang, it all comes together as a masterful whole. It might only end up quietly pleasing cult film fans, but Kim has finally given Korea a film noir to be proud of.


• Korean Movie Reviews for 2005: by Darcy Paquet
  http://koreanfilm.org/kfilm05.html#bittersweet
  It feels nihilistic at times, and as in Old Boy -- which will surely be compared to this film countless times -- the violence is strong and innovative enough to become a topic of conversation. Mixed in with the cruelty is a bit of absurd, black humor in the middle reels, but not enough to lessen the heavy feel of the work as a whole. The end result is a visually stylish, cool film that is both very commercial (even though it underperformed in both Korea and Japan), and also complex enough to make it hard to pin down.


• JoBlo's movie review, by Berge Garabedian
  http://www.joblo.com/reviews.php?mode=joblo_movies&id=1225
  The film also managed to give its lead character a real sense of vulnerability, honor and confidence, while at the same time, developing the storyline into something that would eventually explode into a whole other type of movie. And when it explodes, it does so with great panache, as kicks fly all around, blood is spewed, bullets are zipped and bodies are dropped, as the stillness of some of the film's earlier scenes are balanced off with a barrage of violent acts via one very betrayed-feeling man.


• Time Out London Issue
  http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/83395/A_Bittersweet_Life.html
  Kim is a commercially minded filmmaker and makes sure he fulfils the East Asian quotas for pain infliction, fight scenes and body-count. But his cineaste's enthusiasms keep surfacing: the action choreography by Chung Du-Hong is excellent - John Woo without the ballet and gay subtext - but you sense the director is equally proud of how his cinematographer Kim Ji-Young photographs the light gleaming on limousine bonnets in night-time Seoul, one of the film's many pleasing chromatic variations on traditional noir iconography.


• movieXclusive.com, by Patrick Tay
  http://www.moviexclusive.com/review/bittersweet/bittersweetlife.htm
  A Bittersweet Life will most probably be compared with Old Boy, another acclaimed Korean film noir helmed by Park Chan-Wook. However, these two films excel on their own merits and should not be contrasted. While Old Boy's thematic use of incest, betrayal and vengeance strengthens the plot, A Bittersweet Life transcends conventional, formulaic narrative structures through the use of unique cinematography.

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