This review contains spoilers.
There was a time I would have absolutely loved A Bittersweet Life, and a time I would have hated it for its shortcomings. I’m glad I watched it now, when I was happy to gloss over those shortcomings to enjoy it for the beautiful cinematic experience it is.
It’s a movie of two halves. The first part, essentially the build-up, is a completely different movie from the second half. You do expect the action to pick up while watching the former, but not to the degree where everyone one-ups another in how far they will go to save face. While I was watching, one side of me was screaming at the ridiculousness of the entire thing, while the other was absolutely loving every second of what was going on on the screen.
We are expertly introduced to Sun-woo and his life. We are even foretold what is about to come by the line from Mr. Kang where he says, “You can do a hundred things right, but it takes only one mistake to destroy everything.” As we watch Sun-woo make the decisions he makes, we know where it’s leading. So when I saw him dangling from a rope in a warehouse, I was not at all surprised. What is surprising is how it escalates from there and then keeps escalating until the inevitable end.
It’s almost jarring how comfortably Lee Byung-hun pulls off both halves of this movie. I wasn’t very familiar with him, but this performance alone puts him on my list of actors to follow. He is without question the anchor of this movie. As the plot takes wild swings and sharp turns, he keeps everything together, turning what is impossible to believe somewhat believable. The rest of the cast does a decent job, but this is Byung-hun’s movie.
If there is one thing that is consistent throughout the film is how great it looks. Most of the film is set in enclosed spaces and at night, or what feels like night anyway. They all look great without resorting to cheap neon tricks. There are a few scenes that struck me while I was watching the film. The first is when Sun-woo is walking in the corridor toward where Hee-soo is waiting and makes a sharp turn back when he sees her boyfriend approaching her.
Then there is the sho with Sun-woo hanging from a rope while an older lady is cleaning the floor. The whole outdoor scene when Sun-woo is trying to buy a gun feels more like a Breaking Bad episode. And finally the closing shadow-boxing shot.
When everything is said and done, do the positives of the film outweigh its negatives? As I said in the beginning, it probably depends on when you see it. There was a time when the plot would have lost me about twothirds into the story. Even now it almost did. I was rolling my eyes at the story being told, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. I also thought the ending was well done. So what if things got a little bit ridiculous in the middle, if it made for some amazingly shot scenes?
My rating: 8/10.