For seven years, Sun-woo has served his boss, Kang, without fail until he is assigned to watch over Kang’s young mistress for three days. Kang gets the feeling she is cheating on him, so he orders Sun-woo to finish the girl and her lover off if his suspicions are correct. Sun-woo spends a day with the girl and finds himself changing and questioning his life as a result, while at his job, he seems to be as angry and confrontational as ever, making enemies with everyone around him, including an insulted local chairman who refuses to lose face. Of course, all this occurs right after Kang prophetically warns Sun-woo that even if he does one hundred things right, one mistake could screw it all up.
A Bittersweet Life is a slick film from the first frame, demonstrating a definite aim and appeal for international audiences with its polished, commercial look. Kim Ji-woon tells a very familiar crime-revenge story, but adds his own tweaks and alternate routes to make the ride an enjoyable one anyway. While some of these choices may not always work, Kim still succeeds in at least distinguishing his film from a certain other Korean revenge film that’s been on our minds for the last year.
And he does this through the hero. Kim gives Lee Byung-hun the shoes of a cold, empty enforcer gangster and renders him completely inaccessible as a character. Sun-woo is a lifeless, shell of a man who starts out as a cool anti-hero, but lacks the emotion to give the revenge story proper momentum. He lacks the pathos of Oldboy’s Oh Daesu.
However, that seems to be exactly how the writers intended to create the character. The film completely abandons the conventional idea of making its protag sympathetic for the audience, and instead, uses his development into a more sensitive human being to drive the plot. Sun-woo gradually starts to understand the beauty in life, the necessity for violence and the drive for vengeance. Though he begins as a barely understandable, almost robotic character, his progress in the film slowly breaks down his wall. Along the way, he is simply an interesting character to observe, even if we might not have a stake in his story until late in the narrative.
Lee Byung-hun deserves a great deal of credit for his star performance with a convincing demeanor, visible character change and charisma. He essentially overshadows the rest of the cast, including both Shin Min-a as the attractive, underdeveloped catalyst for Sun-woo’s sudden change and Kim Young-chul as the cold, unforgiving Kang who motivates Sun-woo’s revenge.
The violence of the film is arguably one of the most interesting facets, especially for international audiences in countries with different gun laws. A Bittersweet Life is one of the handful of South Korean films that directly calls attention to the country’s absence of guns through Sun-woo’s visible hand-to-hand fighting prowess and the hordes of gang members equipped with knives and bats. When it comes time for Sun-woo to put a gun together, or when a character finds one aimed at their head, the action takes a serious turn. Over the course of the film, Kim Ji-woon manages to eliminate our casual acceptance of guns as the norm---so it truly matters when they finally are used. It succeeds remarkably, almost matching the power of those deafening gunshots in Seven Samurai.
So while the film does appear to be a bit more typical with its crisp cinematography and rhapsodic classical score, it has its own way of going about its business and a solid collection of beautiful, little moments that make it worthwhile. No one will probably throw their Old Boy DVD in the furnace and start worshipping the All-Seeing power of this film, but nonetheless, it is still rare that a movie with such an alienating main character can still be so entertaining to watch. There must be something to it.
Reviewed by Tarun
