Bittersweet Life, A (Dalkomhan insaeng) (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio & Animation Interviews-Crew-Q & A Session With Director Kim Jee-woon Interviews-Cast & Crew-"La Dolca Vita" Featurette-A Bittersweet Life In Cannes Theatrical Trailer Trailer-The Quite Family, Symphathy For Lady Vengance, Bangkok Dange Featurette-The Isle, Gallery-Stills Reversible Cover
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	114:24 (Case: 120)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ji-woon Kim
Studio Distributor	CJ Entertainment Madman Entertainment	Starring	Ji-woon Kim Jeong-min Hwang Yu-mi Jeong Ku Jin Hae-gon Kim Roe-ha Kim Yeong-cheol Kim Byung-hun Lee Gi-yeong Lee Mu-yeong Lee Eric Moon Dal-su Oh Kwang-rok Oh
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Dalparan Yeong-gyu Jang

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Korean dts 5.1 (768Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, the final sequence plays through the end credits

    Writer/director Kim Ji-woon made quite the impact with his horror-comedy debut The Quiet Family (Choyonghan kajok) in 2000. One of the first of a new generation of Korean films, with its quirky black humour and clever plotting The Quiet Family earned Ji-woon international recognition and a new acceptance amongst Western audiences for this Korean cinema. Ji-woon’s follow-up, A Tale Of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon) solidified his reputation amongst international movie critics as a talent to watch. But it wasn’t until 2005, with the production of this masterpiece, that Ji-woon really achieved cinematic brilliance and a standard of storytelling that would have Hollywood envious.

    A Bittersweet Life (Dalkomhan insaeng) tells the story of Sun-woo (Byung-hun Lee), erstwhile hotel manager, and full-time gangland enforcer. Sun-woo’s life is one of friendless responsibility, always on his toes to prevent being stabbed in the back by a colleague, and lonely nights spend in his white-walled apartment. One day his boss, Mr. Kang (Kim Yeong-cheol), asks him to do a special favour – follow his young girlfriend around while he is out of town on business, and determine whether she is seeing anybody else. If so, kill them both. It sounds like a simple enough task, and nothing Sun-woo hasn’t done before, and when Sun-woo starts spending time with Kang’s girlfriend, Hee-soo (Shin Min-a), he finds that he likes her, though not necessarily in a sexual way. But when Kang’s suspicions turn out to be true, Sun-woo will make a decision that will have serious repercussions for everybody – and in Sun-woo's world, when somebody makes a bad decision, a lot of people are going to wind up dead.

    I first saw this movie at the Melbourne International Film Festival in mid-2006. We also had the pleasure of meeting Kim Ji-woon at this session and talk to him, through his translator, about the film. At this session he discussed the fact that he wanted to make a movie that had the cool and the comedy of Pulp Fiction and the brutal and nihilistic violence of Brian De Palma’s Scarface. On those two counts, this movie delivers in spades, with action sequences you have to see to believe, all more brutal, bloody and nihilistic than the next, and some moments of humour that Tarantino would be truly proud of. My favourite scene of the whole film is that between Sun-woo and the arms dealers – this scene has all the tension, humour and gore, plus a brilliant set up, to make it nothing short of a perfectly executed scene – think the scene in the drug dealer’s house at the end of Boogie Nights and multiply it by a factor of ten, and you’ll get some idea of what I’m talking about.

    This is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. It’s one of the most violent films I saw at the MIFF last year (and I saw the entire Pusher trilogy then, complete with body disposal down an insinkerator), and Kim Ji-woon was utterly unapologetic about the level of violence in this film. You’ll see everything from blood spurting puncture wounds, boards with nails in them stuck into people’s limbs, gushing chest gunshot wounds, and severed limbs – a contender with the uncut version of Kill Bill: Volume 1 as bloodiest film of the new millennium. That said, while the blood and gore is prevalent, the movie itself is more concerned with concepts of honour, love, beauty, chance, choice and ultimately the meaning of life in a brutal and cruel world for a man of violence with no hope of redemption.

    I, for one, found this to be one of the greatest films to come out of Korea last year, better than Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, but ultimately not quite as entertaining as The Host. It is a thrill ride and a half, and bloody enough to give a Paul Verhoeven film a run for its money. Highly recommended.

Video

    Presented in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio, 16x9 enhanced, I was forced to watch this on my 42” Sony E-series Rear-Projection TV, which was disappointing because this is one of those films that works best up on a big screen.

    This is a very detailed, well saturated and highly contrasted image with crisp white and glossy blacks. Dark scenes are well-detailed when necessary and with no hint of murkiness otherwise. Colour glows off the screen. The opening sequence in the hotel is a perfect example of everything that’s great about this transfer.

    This is a proper PAL transfer, coming in under the 120 minutes of the NTSC Director’s Cut Region 3 DVD, with the difference accountable to the shorter running time of PAL video. That said, some of the sequences of this movie, particularly night shots, were obviously shot on digital video then transferred to film for editing and no real thought was put to judder in panning sequences. Those couple or so juddering sequences were present in the film print I saw at the film festival, the NTSC Director’s Cut Region 3 DVD, and again here.

    There were no real film-to-video artefacts other than those present in the master of the film, and no distracting film artefacts – there are a couple of dots of dirt here and there if you strain your eyes looking for them, but nothing excessive.

    Subtitles are available in English, and are yellow with a grey border. They are clear and slightly easier to read than the white subtitles on the Region 3 Director’s Cut version.

    The dual layer pause must be in one of the couple of fade-to-blacks that also cause a loss in sound. It is well hidden, and I am unable to pinpoint the exact location with the software available to me.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Audio is available in a Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Korean DTS 5.1. I sampled the Dolby digital track and watched the film with the DTS track.

    The 5.1 Dolby Digital track is quite clean, but the DTS track walks all over it – better surround ambience, better range, some great subwoofer action and an all round cleaner performance.

    Dialogue is well-intoned with no sync faults and mixed in will with the abundance of surround sound information. The action scene in the abandoned warehouse is definitely one to show the system off.

    The music floods the surrounds when called upon, and the opening title credits sequence is perfect for showing off your system.

    The subwoofer gets a pounding, with more thuds, crashes, breaking bones, cars driving through things and gunshots than you might imagine were possible.

    All up, very good, but still not as good as the DTS-ES 6.1 track on the Director’s Cut Region 3 DVD.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    All menus are presented in 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. The main menu has a scene from the show with sound in 2.0 Dolby Stereo. The other menus are static and silent. Efficient and well laid out – nice design overall.

Featurette: “Q&A with Director Kim Ji-woon at MIFF 2006” (28:07)

    Presented in 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo audio.

Featurette: “’La Dolce Vita’ – Interviews with Cast & Crew” (21:25)

    Presented in 1.33:1, non-16x9 enhanced, 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo audio.

Featurette: “A Bittersweet Life at Cannes” (7:43)

    Presented in 1.33:1, non-16x9 enhanced, 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo audio.

Original Theatrical Trailer (2:02)

    Presented in 2:35:1 letterboxed, non-16x9 enhanced, 2.0 Dolby Stereo soundtrack with English subtitles.

Madman Trailers

    Trailers for:

• The Quiet Family
• Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
• Bangkok Dangerous
• The Isle

Stills Gallery

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    There is no R1 release of this DVD. The R4 release appears to be the same transfer of the movie as the R2 French release, but with a couple more extras subtitled in English not French. The best version is definitely the R3 Director’s Cut which has a couple of additional shots, some more blood, and an awesome DTS-ES 6.1 soundtrack that, despite the quality of the soundtrack on the R4 release, puts this to shame. The extras aren’t subtitled, but if you want to enjoy this film how it was meant to be seen, grab the R3 Director’s Cut release. For more detail on specifics, check out the Rewind website. I also felt that, on a side by side comparison between the R4 and R3 Director’s Cut, the R3 version has a slightly better image in terms of detail and colour balance.

    A Bittersweet Life is a stunning neo-noir, bitterly humorous and graphically violent masterpiece – some truly perfect film-making at times, and despite its minor flaws, it is well-worthy of an addition to any action junkie’s movie collection. A prime example of everything that’s great about Korean new-wave cinema.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall