A BITTERSWEET LIFE
**** out of *****
Reviewed by Tobias

Screening in the 2006 New Zealand International Film Festival
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Genres
Action
Crime
Gangsters
Martial Arts

2005
Written and directed by
Ji-woon Kim
Cast
Jeong-min Hwang .... President Baek
Ku Jin    .... Min-gi
Roi-ha Kim .... Moon-suk
Yeong-cheol Kim .... Mr. Kang
Byung-hun Lee .... Sun-woo
Gi-yeong Lee .... Moo-sung
Eric Moon .... Gun Dealer's Brother
Min-a Shin .... Hee-soo

So you are sitting there sipping on an espresso in the sky lounge, La Dolce Vita - your castle.  Another good day of business coming to an end and one more in seven years of faithfully serving your underworld boss.  Your loyal right-hand man, Ming-gi, comes up and mentions disturbances with the meeting taking place downstairs.  So you take the staff passages, through the kitchen (sizing up the quality of the meals as you pass) and past the laundry to finally reach the clandestine meeting room.  You walk in and give the goons to the count of three to leave.  The confused guests are becoming somewhat humoured – they may be guests in the sky lounge of Sun-Woo (that is you), enforcer of President Kang, but they are from the Baek gang.  They will sit right there.  The counting is ignored and, well, that is the point where you jump onto the table and deal with them.  You effortlessly sweep around the room with honed martial arts in a flurry of fists and feet and soon they are all face-down and unconscious.  This is how A Bittersweet Life begins.

Before the welcoming action though, A Bittersweet Life actually opens with narration of a pupil and his master which, as it will soon become apparent, is one of those exposés that stays unclear in meaning until the end.  But remember you will understand it when the credits roll – the journey itself is important and this one travels the age old path of revenge.  The story begins when President Kang confides in Sun-Woo that he suspects his secret young lover Hee-Soo of infidelity and sends him to investigate and deal with her if it is true.  Unfortunately during his investigation, he becomes mesmerised by Hee-soo; but has he fallen for her beauty or is it the thought that she belongs to another world?  After a few days he uncovers that Hee-soo is indeed seeing another man.  However, when the moment comes to finish his task, he is unexplainably unable to kill the girl and her true love.  President Kang finds out about this failure and is naturally displeased.  So disappointed in fact that Sun-Woo suddenly finds himself the target of manhunt from both the Kang and the Baek gang that is out for their own revenge.

If there is one thing that evolves from A Bittersweet Life, it is this: Sun-Woo is one of the toughest bad-ass heroes out there.  To survive being buried alive (only a minor inconvenience to our anti-hero), shot more times than footage for a Kubrick film (Bah! Merely a flesh-wound) and hung up to be beaten more brutally than a piñata at my Mexican nephew's birthday party (nothing but tough nuts coming out of this one) there is no question that all this punishment only comes back double to those who deal it.  And that's just what happens as  Sun-Woo soon sets to maim his way up the family tree and stop at nobody to reach the man he served so loyally.  If you recall the first fight at the onset of the film, that was merely a sampler for cleverly constructed fight scenes to come.  I am pleased too - with a lot of martial arts fighting done in a comedic fashion in recent films, it is such a refreshing (and bloody) sight to see one man yet again take on a bunch of goons with fierce determination and intensity and then walk away from each battle with merely spatters of blood on his shirt (his blood).  Such action takes me back to Die Hard and dare I proclaim it, Sun-Woo is John McClane of foreign film.

I cannot find a single aspect of A Bittersweet Life that screams out louder than the rest as the whole film pieces together brilliantly.  The story is guided by solid narration and all the performances bring each character with their unique persona to life; a life that the costumes also reverberate.  Just like many film noir, there are sharp and contrasting visuals - any scene with Hee-soo is lit brightly to reflect her innocence while all the rest are dark (being evil or 'not innocent') is an example of this.  The story is also very linear but in wittingly creating the film like this it means A Bittersweet Life is there to watch and enjoy without searching for plot twists.  The soundtrack is appropriately mafiaesque whereas certain pieces, such as a classical score, lingers in the background when Sun-Woo is in his domain, La Dolce Vita.  For those viewers who love technical detail, there is so much to swoon over that this review would mutate into an analysis.  I was simply too drunk on the awesomeness of this film to write immediately after watching A Bittersweet Life but a few days have passed and I feel the same.

The best part of the film though, is the end.  Not just because it has the traditional and climatic 'boss-fight' but because of the way the movie finishes so beautifully.  It shifts gear from revenge and reveals a different Sun-Woo.  The closing words are those of the pupil and master again, this time reflecting on the true feelings of Sun-Woo.  Even though I ache to explain what I believe the final scenes means, I will avoid ruining the experience, but I can say this, it is bittersweet.

This film will screen in Wellington on July 26th at 1:15pm and July 27th at 8:45pm at the Embassy Theatre. Refer to the Film Fest homepage for more information.

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