Die Bad (Ryoo Seung-wan, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm
This film is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season and also screens on December 27th. Full details here.
Time Out review:
Sparky indie feature in four chapters, two previously shown as shorts in
their own right. The chapters are deliberately varied in style
(ciné-vérité, horror-noir, etc), but linked into a loose
narrative. Seok-Hwan (Ryoo himself) provokes a pool hall fight between
rival student gangs in which one guy dies. Seven years later he's become
a cop and his kid brother is drifting into crime. Meanwhile the
accidental murderer Sung-Bin (Park) is released from jail and
universally ostracised. Haunted by the ghost of the boy he killed, he
becomes a crimelord's enforcer and eventually revenges himself on
Seok-Hwan by putting his brother in danger. By the end everyone is dead,
dying or merely irredeemable. Basically an excuse for Ryoo and friends
to show off their stunt action skills, it says all the obvious things
about macho values and delinquency, but comes up fresh and watchable
thanks to its play with form. A version trimmed by 3 to 4 minutes was a
surprise hit in Korea.
Tony Rayns
Here (and above) is an extract.
No comments:
Post a Comment