Trailer for A Bittersweet Life, which screened at the 2009 Pusan West Film Festival.
A film-noirish crime action drama, A Bittersweet Life testifies Kim Jee-woon’s skillful combination of storytelling abilities and an original visual style. He presents a delicate love story embedded under the façade of a cruel world of gangster violence. Sun-woo (Lee, Byung-hun) is an intelligent, cool-headed perfectionist gangster who has climbed to the top by earning the absolute trust of his boss Mr. Kang (Kim Yeong-cheol). When Kang suspects his latest mistress, Heui-su (Shin, Min-a) of having another boyfriend, he orders Sun-woo to keep a close eyes on her and to kill her if she has betrayed him. Things get complicated as Sun-woo slowly falls for Heui-su. The film shows magnificent mise-en-scene, stunning performance of the actors including the lead actor Lee Byung-hun, who was picked up by Hollywood after this film, and brilliantly directed fighting scenes.