A Hard Day

A Hard Day (Hangul: 끝까지 간다; RR: Kkeutkkaji Ganda; lit. "Take It to the End") is a 2014 South Korean crime action thriller film written and directed by Kim Seong-hun, and starring Lee Sun-kyun and Cho Jin-woong.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} It was selected to compete in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.^[6][7][8][9]

Plot

Homicide Detective Ko Gun-su's mother recently died. As he drives to the funeral, he receives calls from his colleagues. His department are being investigated by internal affairs over bribery charges. Distracted by a dog, he runs over a homeless man.

Gun-su hides the body in his car trunk and arrives at the funeral home just in time to put his mother's corpse into the coffin. Gun-su then learns that the IAD officers have found the money in his drawer, and will search his car for more evidence. He hides the body in his mother's coffin, which is then buried without incidence. The next morning, his Chief tells him that IAD stopped investigating his department, thanks to a Lieutenant Park.

They then receive a tip on Lee Gwang-min, a wanted killer who turns out to be the dead homeless man. At his hideout, they find nothing significant. Gun-su realizes that the hideout is close to the spot on the road where Lee died. The scene is being investigated by a police officer, who informs his colleagues of a hit-and-run incident where the perpetrator left with the victim's body. Noticing a traffic camera on the road, Chief tasks Detective Choi Sang-ho to look through the footage. Choi spots the car responsible for the hit-and-run (Gun-su's), but is only able to make out its brand and the first number on the plate.

At his office, Gun-su receives calls from an unknown man. He claims to see Gun-su hitting the man and hiding the body in Mt. Yangja (where his mother is buried). Outside, he sees the man and chases after him, but is unable to catch him. Realizing the man doesn't know where the body is buried, Gun-su ignores subsequent calls. The man then reveals himself as Lieutenant Park Chang-min, who earlier helped clear Gun-su's department of bribery charges. In the bathroom, Gun-su tries to intimidate Park, but Park easily overpowers him, demands Lee's body handed over, and leaves.

Gun-su digs up Lee and sees gunshot wounds on his body. He takes Lee's cellphone and charges it. Immediately, he receives a phone call revealing that Park and Lee has a connection. He tracks down and interrogates the caller. The man reveals that when Park was in vice squad, he stole the confiscated drugs and made a huge profit from it. Park kept the money and the drugs in a private safe deposit vault. Lee stole the vault key and escaped. Gun-su drives back to Mt. Yangja, searches Lee's body and finds the key. He is then arrested by Choi, who saw Gun-su's license plate on a traffic ticket and realized he killed Lee.

At a vacant dock, Gun-su begins telling Choi of Park's involvement, but Park calls him and instructs him to get out of Choi's car. He does so, and a heavy container is dropped on the car, killing Choi. Park tells Gun-su that he is at his house, and demands the body delivered to him in the morning. Gun-su rushes home to find his family safe. Determined to kill Park, he makes a reservation at a hotel and urges his family to go. He goes to the station's armory to request live rounds for his gun, and steals the powerful Improvised_explosive_device confiscated earlier. He stuffs the explosive in Lee's body.

In the morning, Gun-su delivers the body to Park and activates the IED, which throws Park's car into a lake nearby. He waits on the bank, but Park doesn't resurface. Gun-su goes back home and prepares to turn himself in when Park shows up, bleeding but alive. Park beats up Gun-su, who desperately tries to retrieve his gun from a fallen bookshelf. After a grueling fight, Park spots the gun as well and they both try to grab it, unaware that the trigger is stuck on a nail. When Park pulls at the gun barrel, it goes off, killing him.

At the station, Gun-su's superiors discuss the matter and eventually decide to sweep it under the rug to protect their reputations. Gun-su resigns from his job. At the cemetery, a monument is built at his mother's grave. Gun-su considers opening a toast shop, an idea his sister earlier proposed. When they leave, he sees the key to Park's deposit vault which he dropped when Choi arrested him. He finds the vault, and the movie ends with him staring at the huge stacks of money and drugs in it.

Cast

• Lee Sun-kyun as Detective Ko Gun-su
• Cho Jin-woong as Lieutenant Park Chang-min
• Shin Jung-geun as Chief
• Jung Man-sik as Detective Choi Sang-ho
• Shin Dong-mi as Gun-su's younger sister
• Kim Dong-young as Detective Do Hee-chul
• Joo Seok-tae as Detective Nam
• Heo Jung-eun as Mina
• Park Bo-gum as Officer Lee Jin-ho
• Lee Jae-won as Jo Neung-hyun
• Jo Ha-seok as Lee Gwang-min
• Yoo Soon-woong as Funeral home director
• Lee Jang-yoo as Coffin rites instructor
• Jung Woo-hyuk as Funeral home security guard
• Byun Jung-hye as Funeral home female employee
• Jang In-sub as Officer Lee Dong-yun
• Bae Yoo-ram as Officer Shin Hyun-jin
• Kim Kyung-beom as Senior officer at DUI checkpoint
• Kim Seung-hoon as Taxi driver
• Kim Kang-hyun as Young-chul
• Song Young-gyu as Team leader of internal affairs
• Lee Ji-hoon as Officer in charge of police armory
• Nam Kyeong-eup as High ranking police official
• Kim Hae-gon as Piggybank owner
• Baek Jong-hwan as Piggybank employee

Reception

The film debuted to stellar reviews at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival in the Director's Fortnight sidebar, where it was praised by critics as a well-made thriller with unrelenting suspense and flashes of humor. Upon its release in South Korea on May 29, 2014, at first it didn't attract much attention or hype, with a lackluster 80,000 ticket sales on its opening day.^[10] But through strong word of mouth from viewers, A Hard Day began an unexpectedly popular run at the box office, placing second place for four weeks behind Hollywood blockbusters X-Men: Days of Future Past and Edge of Tomorrow. It also outperformed other local noir thrillers with bigger stars, such as Man on High Heels and No Tears for the Dead. A Hard Day quickly reached its break-even point, garnering 1.6 million admissions 11 days after its release, and by its sixth week had drawn 3.08 million admissions.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} At the end of its run, A Hard Day had grossed US$24,171,936 from 3,450,305 tickets sold.^[16]

Awards and nominations

References

External links

• Official website (Korean)
• A Hard Day at the Korean Movie Database
• A Hard Day at the Internet Movie Database
• A Hard Day at HanCinema