REVIEWED - A BITTERSWEET LIFE/DALKOMHAN INSENG AS KOREAN cinema continues to gather supporters overseas (that is to say, here), the reputations of directors such as Oldboy's Park Chan-Wook and 3 Iron's Kim Ki-Duk have soared.
Sadly, Kim Ji-Woon - whose A Tale of Two Sisters was one of the best horror films of the current decade - has remained less well known. This is, perhaps, to do with his being less flashily experimental than Kim and (marginally) less fervent in his taste for viscera than Park.
It is to be hoped that the release of A Bittersweet Life, an explosively exciting, riotously funny exercise in genre redefinition, may rectify this injustice. The film, though satisfyingly foreign in any number of ways, steals from and alludes to American cinema in ways that should render it easily digestible to a mainstream audience.
Sun Woo (Lee Byung-Hun), an enforcer for a sleek hoodlum, is ordered to follow his boss's girlfriend to discover whether she is having an affair. Predictably enough, the young man develops an affection for the pretty cellist and, when he catches her in flagrante delicto, rather than beating her and her boyfriend into mince, demands that the two lovers never meet again.
Other things happen and, his boss being less than happy that Sun Woo concealed the affair, our hero eventually finds himself viciously pummelled and buried in a too-shallow grave. A hand pushes up through the earth. Fans of Oldboy will enjoy the ensuing orgy of vengeance.
Sourpusses might justifiably complain that somebody else has previously done virtually everything Kim does in A Bittersweet Life. The nod to Ennio Morricone's scores for Sergio Leone westerns will, for example, remind many viewers, drunk with allusion, of a similar pastiche in Kill Bill. But few films can match A Bittersweet Life for the sheer invention of its bravura action sequences. There is a daunting sense of control throughout. Many risks are taken, but virtually all pay dividends. Go see.
Donald Clarke
