The latest effort from Moviehouse favourite Kim Jee-Woon, director of the inspired A Tale Of Two Sisters, kicks off with one of the hoariest chestnuts in all of cinema – a gangster (Lee) being asked to, er, ‘mind’ his boss’ comely mistress whom he suspects to be up to no good. Suffice to say, things do not go according to plan. By act two, everybody is gunning for somebody else with spectacularly grisly results.
Kim deftly twists this potential b-noir into a thrilling revenge cycle and purgatorial odyssey. Sweeping shots trail after men with guns marching through endless winding corridors – corridors which share those same claustrophobic dimensions as the paper houses in samurai films of yore. The epic allusions don’t stop there. Leone trumpets blaze across the film’s fantastic denouement as blood and gristle oozes forth from every character while Lee’s charismatic turn recalls a younger Chow Yun-Fat.
A Bittersweet Life, however, is far too Korean to play as a straight John Woo wuxia. Like The Quiet Family, Kim’s most recent release (in the West), the film is heavily punctuated by a gallows buffoonery. Every gushing wound ushers some darkly humorous pratfall and a squelching noise. You just have to love that sound.