A Bittersweet Life

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A Bittersweet Life
Directed by Kim Ji-woon
Produced by Park Dong-ho
Eugene Lee
Written by Kim Ji-woon
Starring Lee Byung-hun
Hwang Jung-min
Kim Yeong-cheol
Kim Roe-ha
Lee Gi-yeong
Shin Min-ah
Music by Jang Yeong-gyu
Dal Palan
Cinematography Kim Ji-yong
Editing by Choi Jae-geun
Distributed by CJ Entertainment
Release date(s) 1 April 2005 (South Korea)
Running time 120 min.
Country South Korea
Language Korean
Official website
IMDb profile
Korean name
Hangul 달콤한 인생
Hanja 달콤한 人生
Revised Romanization Dalkomhan insaeng

A Bittersweet Life (Dalkomhan insaeng) (Hangul: 달콤한인생) is a 2005 film by Korean director Kim Ji-woon. Highly cultural and ruthlessly violent, it illustrates the ethical codes in the Korean mob and how they clash with personal morality.

Contents

[edit] Plot

 The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article.
Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

[edit] Beginning

The film opens with a shot of a willow tree and a voiceover from the protagonist, Kim Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun), who is a mob enforcer and hotel manager. When we see Sun-woo, he is eating dessert in a restaurant called La Dolce Vita, which he ‘manages’. He calls on one of his juniors, Min-gi, to help deal with members of a rival family who have outstayed their welcome. After issuing them a warning, Sun-woo and Min-gi attack and incapacitate them.

Sun-woo has dinner with his boss, Kang (Kim Yeong-cheol). They determine the root of the problem to be a rival boss’ son, Baek Jr. (Hwang Jung-min). Mun-suk (Kim Roe-ha), Sun-woo’s peer, arrives. He gorges on food and issues half-baked apologies for his absence to properly deal with Baek Jr's underlings. After reproaching Mun-suk and making him leave the room, Kang asks Sun-woo to watch over his mistress, Hee-soo (Shin Min-a) while he is out of town, and to kill her if she is unfaithful. In an allusion to the events that will unfold, he remarks that “you can do a hundred things right, but it takes only one mistake to destroy everything.”

[edit] Tensions arise

Baek Jr. is unhappy about Sun-woo’s assault on his men. Sun-woo takes no notice, further aggravating him. Baek Jr. vents his anger on one of his underlings by assaulting him with a telephone. Mun-suk arranges a meeting between the two to ease tensions. Sun-woo isn’t having any of it. He tells off both Baek Jr. and Mun-suk before taking his leave. Mun-suk warns him that he is not untouchable.

Meanwhile, Sun-woo develops a fondness for Hee-soo. It is not clear if he loves her but she has torn down a wall he spent years building around himself. When he catches her with a lover, he lays him out, but hesitates to take their lives. He lets them go, on the condition that they never see each other again. Hee-soo is stricken and wants nothing more to do with Sun-woo, too overcome with emotion to appreciate that he disobeyed his boss’ orders for her sake. Sun-woo takes out his frustrations on a group of punks by beating them up and flinging their car keys into the river. He is approached in the parking lot of his home by a man in glasses and a bucket hat. The man introduces himself as Mu-sung (Lee Gi-yeong), one of Baek Jr.’s enforcers. He advises Sun-woo to say three words, “I was wrong,” and this will clear all misunderstandings between them. Sun-woo adamantly refuses, ready for a fight. Mu-sung leaves without the apology.

Upon returning, Kang pays Hee-soo a visit. She is cold toward him and it is clear she wants to break their affair off.

Back in his apartment, Sun-woo is having trouble sleeping. He flips his lights on and off to kill time, and is caught off guard when armed men appear behind him and descend on him immediately. Mu-sung emerges and kicks a badly beaten Sun-woo in the face, rendering him unconscious.

[edit] Sun-woo’s downfall

Upon awakening, Sun-woo finds himself in a warehouse, tied up and suspended from the ceiling. A lady mops his blood up. He pleads for her help, but she pays him no heed. Baek Jr. appears with Mu-sung and the rest of his henchmen. He gloats over Sun-woo’s position. When Sun-woo tells him he’ll remember this, Baek Jr. responds, “You have no idea what’s happening, do you?” He orders Mu-sung to butcher Sun-woo, but a phone call robs Sun-woo of a quick death. He is loaded in a van with a plastic bag over his head and transported to another location. The van dumps him and drives off. Outside, it is raining heavily. Sun-woo rips the plastic bag off. Two cars pull up. Kang and Mun-suk get out.

Kang asks Sun-woo why he betrayed him. Sun-woo is at a loss for words. Kang departs. Mun-suk says, “People don’t matter for shit. No one can ever see what’s coming next.” Sun-woo asks him what he’s going to do. Mun-suk passes the phone to Sun-woo. It’s Kang, giving him another chance to explain himself. A battered Sun-woo says he did what he thought was best. Kang is dissatisfied with his answer and asks for the “real reason.” Sun-woo doesn’t have one. Kang asks him to put Mun-suk back on. Mun-suk listens and smiles. His henchmen hold Sun-woo down. Mun-suk shatters two of his left fingers with a wrench. They proceed to bury him alive.

Sun-woo digs his way out, desperate and half-dead, only to discover that Mun-suk is waiting for him. Mun-suk congratulates him and intends to dig a deeper hole. He takes Sun-woo to a construction site and brings up a similar incident, where Sun-woo once told a man there was no turning back and to accept his fate before cutting his wrists. Mun-suk has given Sun-woo bandages for his fingers and a cellular phone to call Kang with, telling him he’d better say the right thing if he wants to get out of this. He has fifteen minutes.

Sun-woo’s former comrades are indifferent to his plight. Just like that they’ve turned against him. Sun-woo looks around for a means of escape. After some contemplation, he picks up the phone and puts it to his ear. After fifteen minutes, Mun-suk approaches Sun-woo, who is hunched over with the phone. Sun-woo hands it back. Mun-suk realizes the battery is missing. Sun-woo bashes Mun-suk’s eye in with the battery. A stunning set piece occurs, where he fends off over twenty men with a burning block of wood and commandeers a BMW to make his getaway.

[edit] Retaliation

Kang is livid over Sun-woo’s escape. He holds a meeting with the other families, including the Baeks, and recounts an anecdote about the importance of obeying your boss. Once, a man who wouldn’t admit he was wrong lost one of his hands. Kang concludes, “This time, a hand is not enough.”

After recuperating, Sun-woo looks up Min-gi, who gives him the contact information of weapons suppliers. He meets with two of them, Mikhail and Myung-gu, and inadvertently causes their car to crash. They survive, albeit with injuries, and introduce Sun-woo to their boss, Tae-woong (Kim Hae-gon). Sun-woo presents his name card and claims he has a recommendation from Boss Han. Tae-woong rings Han up but Han is busy. While waiting for Han to call back, he teaches Sun-woo how to take apart, reassemble and load a Stechkin APS, calling it “the finest Russian-made pistol.”

Han calls back and Tae-woong brings Sun-woo up to him, only to receive shocking news. He and Sun-woo stare at each other, then at their pistols. They rush to load them. Sun-woo finishes first and shoots Tae-woong in the face. He fires at Myung-gu, who fires back with a Steyr TMP. Sun-woo eventually blows his brains out. Mikhail flees, as Sun-woo has run out of ammo. Sun-woo wrenches a spare clip from Tae-woong’s grip. He goes after Mikhail and manages to take him out. He drags Mikhail’s body back inside and takes with him as many guns and ammunition as he can carry.

Tae-woong’s younger brother (Eric Mun) returns to find everyone dead. He examines Sun-woo’s name card and starts stocking up on weapons, too.

Sun-woo hunts down Mu-sung and holds him at gunpoint, forcing him to call Baek Jr. out.

Baek Jr. waits in an ice rink and is surprised to see Sun-woo instead of Mu-sung. Sun-woo asks him why he did what he did and he mealy-mouths to buy time. He manages to get to the shiv in his coat pocket and stabs Sun-woo six times in the gut. He celebrates too early and is shot in the foot, then the back, and finally the chest.

[edit] Return to La Dolce Vita

Sun-woo takes a taxicab to La Dolce Vita. He phones Kang and gives him a message: “You messed with the wrong guy. Watch yourself.”

Mu-sung and the lady who refused to help Sun-woo have been captured and bound in the very same warehouse. Mu-sung’s henchmen find and untie them. Mu-sung yells for a phone so he can inform Baek Jr. of the danger he is in, but it is far too late.

Kang summons Min-gi to learn about Sun-woo’s whereabouts. Min-gi denies knowing anything, unconvincingly. In a fit of rage, Kang drives his face into a dinner plate.

Hee-soo is onboard a bus. She receives a call from Sun-woo but decides against picking up or calling back.

Eric Mun’s character is driving to La Dolce Vita. Inside, the staff is being cleared out due to another meeting between the families. Sun-woo arrives outside and passes Eric Mun’s character, who is in his car making preparations. They are unaware of each other’s presence.

Hee-soo receives a gift from Sun-woo, a red table lamp that they saw while shopping together back at the beginning of the movie.

In the washroom, Sun-woo looks in the mirror and the blood bleeding out the gut and wonders how he made it this far. He encounters Mun-suk, who is smoking in the alley behind La Dolce Vita. Mun-suk pulls out a switchblade but is no match for Sun-woo’s Stechkin. Sun-woo shoots off his fingers and pumps two more rounds into him. Mun-suk weeps before Sun-woo finishes him off.

Outside the building, Mu-sung and his henchmen pull up in a van with an assortment of firepower at hand. Eric Mun’s character sees this and begins sliding bullets into his revolver.

Sun-woo rides the elevator up to La Dolce Vita. The camera lowers to show he has shot and killed two of his former comrades. He exits the elevator and shoots another two when they try to stop him, one in the face and the other in the kneecap. He guns down one more right before entering the restaurant.

In La Dolce Vita, Sun-woo and Kang walk up to each other and stand face-to-face.

Kang: “Let’s not make a fuss.”
Sun-woo: “This is my last stop. I have nowhere left to go.”

Sun-woo shoots one of Kang’s henchmen as he tries to sneak away. Everyone in the room freezes. Kang asks Sun-woo if he really wants to take it this far. Sun-woo responds with a question of his own: why Kang would do this to him. Kang tells Sun-woo he insulted him by disobeying his orders. Sun-woo asks for the “real reason.” He asks Kang if he was really going to kill him. The conversation gets more intense as Sun-woo nears the brink of tears, shouting that he served Kang like a dog for seven years. He points his gun at Kang.

Sun-woo: Tell me something. Anything. Tell me!

Sun-woo calms down and lowers his gun. Kang is unapologetic. He wonders what’s gotten into Sun-woo. Was it because of her? He asks Sun-woo not to do this. Sun-woo shoots Kang in the heart. Kang touches the wound and blood pours out of it. He stumbles back and drops dead. Sun-woo laments, “We can’t turn back time, can we?”

A second later, he gets nicked in the head by a bullet. He turns around just before collapsing to see Mu-sung gripping a smoking gun, backed by three of his henchmen. Mu-sung strides over to where Sun-woo is lying, unaware that the bullet had only grazed the side of his head and he is still alive. Sun-woo opens fire, and a lengthy gunfight ensues.

Sun-woo kills Mu-sung and two of his henchmen. The third one flees but is gunned down by Eric Mun’s character, who has just arrived at the scene. He lets a dying Sun-woo (whose injuries have taken their toll on him) phone Hee-soo, and this time she picks up, but he is too weak to respond. Hearing her voice, he reminisces about a rehearsal of hers where she played Romance by Yuhki Kuramoto. We see him smiling for the first time in the film. He manages to shed a tear before Eric Mun’s character shoots him dead.

[edit] Epilogue/Ending

Sun-woo narrates the following lines:

One late autumn night, the disciple awoke crying. So the master asked the disciple, "Did you have a nightmare?"
"No."
"Did you have a sad dream?"
"No", said the disciple. "I had a sweet dream."
"Then why are you crying so sadly?"
The disciple wiped his tears away and quietly answered, "Because the dream I had can’t come true."

The film closes with a shot of Sun-woo shadowboxing in front of a window, before the credits roll and his reflection fades out. The ending has been interpreted as the rest of the film being Sun-woo’s fantasy. Another possible interpretation places it as an extended flashback, where he was on top of the world, before it all came crashing down. The dream that cannot come true is his dream of being with Hee-soo. His fading reflection represents the end of his life.

The true reason for inclusion of the shadowboxing scene can be found on the 2nd Disc of the Special Edition dvd. During a making of special feature titled "Tell Me! Why Did You Do That To Me?", action choreographer Jung Doo-Hong asked the Director "Why did you (Kim Ji-Woon) make that shadowboxing scene at the end?" Director Kim Ji-woon explained the scene was filmed to show that essentially Sun-Woo was fighting himself more than anyone else, and to show the happiest, sweetest moments in his life.

[edit] Cast

  • Hwang Jung-min - President Baek
  • Jin Ku - Min-gi
  • Kim Hae-gon - Gun dealer
  • Kim Roi-ha - Mun-suk
  • Kim Young-cheol - Mr. Kang
  • Lee Byung-hun - Sunwoo
  • Lee Gi-yeong - Mu-sung
  • Eric Mun, aka Mun Jung-hyk - Gun dealer's brother
  • Oh Dal-su - Myung-gu
  • Shin Min-ah - Heesoo

[edit] Subtext

There are two prominent themes in A Bittersweet Life. The most apparent is vengeance. Most of the characters in the film hold grudges.

  • Sun-woo beats up Hee-soo’s lover on behalf of his boss.
  • Baek Jr. and Mun-suk capture and torment Sun-woo as payback for his disrespect towards them.
  • Kang orders more torment inflicted: he regards this as reprisal for Sun-woo’s disobedience.
  • Sun-woo humiliates Mu-sung by reenacting exactly what Mu-sung did to him. He kills Baek Jr., Mun-suk and Kang as revenge.
  • Mu-sung wants get even with Sun-woo for humiliating him and killing his boss.
  • Finally, Eric Mun’s character has a vendetta against Sun-woo for murdering his brother and sees it through.

The film also discusses how unpredictable life can be. At one point, Sun-woo is still wondering how everything that had happened to him came about. As Mun-suk says, “No one can ever see what’s coming next.”

[edit] Box office and critical reception

Critical receptions were mainly positive, with critics describing it as "organic, essential, beautifully staged and refreshingly realistic."[1] Lee Byung-hun was praised for his acting ability with a critic from Cinema Eye saying that he "brings sheer excitement in his performance" and is "an angel dressed in vengeance". The critic also noted that A Bittersweet Life is "the best film of 2005."[2] Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 8.1/10 ratings, with 6 critics, giving the movie a certified "fresh" rating.[3] However, BeyondHollywood.com gave the film a 4/5 stars, saying that "there's no real deeper meaning" for the film.[4] Though the box office is unknown, when the film finally ended its theatrical run, it had 1,291,621 admissions.[1]

[edit] Awards and nominations

[edit] 26th Blue Dragon Awards

  • Best Directior - Kim Ji-Woon (nominated)
  • Best Leading Actor - Lee Byung-Heon nominated)
  • Best Supporting Actor - Hwang Jung-Min (nominated)
  • Best Cinematography - Kim Ji-Yong (won)
  • Best Music - Dalparan and Jang Young-Gyu (nominated)
  • Best Art Direction - Ryu Sung-Hee (nominated)
  • Best Lighting - Shin Sang-Ryeol (nominated)

[edit] 4th 대한민국 영화대상 (Korean Film Awards)

  • Best Supporting Actor - Hwang Jung-Min (won)

[edit] Korean Critics' Choice Awards

[edit] Top 10 Films

  • Note: The films are in no particular orders
  • 그때 그 사람들 (The President's Last Bang) - DIR. Im Sang-Soo
  • 말아톤 (Marathon) - DIR. Jung Yoon-Cheol
  • 주먹이 운다 (Crying Fist) - DIR. Ryu Seung-Wan
  • 달콤한 인생 (A Bittersweet Life) - DIR. Kim Ji-Woon
  • 친절한 금자씨 (Sympathy For Lady Vengeance) - DIR. Park Chan-Wook
  • 혈의 누 (Blood Rain) - DIR. Kim Dae-Seung
  • 연애의 목적 (Rules of Dating) - DIR. Han Jae-Rim
  • 웰컴 투 동막골 (Welcome To Dongmakgol) - DIR. Park Gwang-Hyun
  • 형사 (Duelist) - DIR. Lee Myung-Se
  • 너는 내 운명 (You Are My Sunshine) - DIR. Park Jin-Pyo

[edit] Other awards

  • Best Actor - Lee Byung-Heon (won)
  • Best Music - Dalparan, Jang Young-Gyu (won)

[edit] 13th Chunsa Film Art Awards

  • Best Actor : Lee Byung Hun (won)

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Earlier film posters and the dvd label had Lee Byung-hun smoking. Sun-woo never touches a cigarette in the film. In fact, he chews gum in one scene.
  • Though a poster features Eric Mun (a member of the boy band Shinhwa), he is onscreen for barely fifteen minutes.
  • There are two different versions of the scene where Sun-woo exits the elevator and makes his way through the hallway to La Dolce Vita up until he confronts Kang. The music differs, while the scene itself is unchanged.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "달콤한 인생 (A Bittersweet Life) DVD Review", TwitchFilm. Retrieved on 2008-02-08. 
  2. ^ "A Bittersweet Life", Cinema Eye. Retrieved on 2008-02-08. 
  3. ^ "A Bittersweet Life", Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2008-02-08. 
  4. ^ "A Bittersweet Life (2005) Movie Review", Beyond Hollywood. Retrieved on 2008-02-08. 


[edit] External links