A Bitter Sweet Life ........

This film makes me so happy, the melancholia music never far away from a brutal beating to some thugs and to top it off the stylish way these are done are gloriously indulgent, mafiaesque boss sends up and coming star of his group to babysit a young girl he is dating, not counting on the conscience of the main character played superbly by Lee Byung-hun dealing with the image of love through others eyes, the boss sending him to assassinate the young lovers who he finds cheating on his boss, the scenes from then on tense as he gets one last chance to please the man in charge by explaining his reluctance to kill them.

The movie from here on involves brutal revenge on the gang members he was dealing with in a side plot of dominance between gangs and with his own comrades murdering them without a blink of an eye as he falls from grace as the next big thing to nobody, expertly dispatching people left right and centre, what makes the film so great is watching the pain in his eyes as he asks why the seemingly solid relationship with his boss broke down to this extent and even the climax of the film he pleads " why " in short an amazing Korean cinema film that had me hooked !