I wanted to but couldn't!

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Extremely slow start at the beginning of the movie. I thought that the main character was "Unlikeable" at the beginning. . . . The movie finally changed after 56 minutes in, when the main villain shows up. After the evil villain appeared, the main character became more Likable, because I felt sorry for him. The movie sped up during its second half, and there were more action and suspense to it. The movie was good overall, but I wish that the first half of the movie was done better.

"Kkeutkkaji ganda" ("A Hard Day" in English) is the first Kim Seong-hun movie that I've seen. What a shocker. I've heard some about rampant corruption in South Korea, but if this movie is any indication, things can get REALLY ugly. The main character is Ko, a crooked detective who accidentally kills someone while driving drunk. But after he covers up the killing, he finds out that there was more to this man than he realized, and that someone might have seen him.The setting is not identified, as if to say that this could be the sort of thing that happens everywhere in the country. Ko is already the venal type, but once he covers up the manslaughter, he finds himself surrounded by some of the sleaziest elements in society. Almost every scene contains a surprise, especially towards the end. My favorite scenes were in the funeral home, and by the lake. But every scene has something in store.The movie got screened at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival at the Director's Fortnight sidebar. I think that it should've won something. It's one of the cleverest movies that I've seen. Definitely see it.PS: The Korean title translates to "Take It to the End".

I saw the film as it was opening a great festival I like. I knew nothing about it (name included). A police officer drives to his mothers funeral, he gets a message from his wife that she wants a divorce and accidentally hits someone with his car. He puts the body in the trunk and later hides it into his mother's coffin. The film is as black as can be. Divorces, deaths, violence... If things can go bad, they will go even worse. A hard day in life of police officer. So many things happening. When you hope he got away, you see has only fallen deeper. I totally laughed half of the film. It was so black it was almost a parody. I loved every minute of it.

Homicide Detective Ko Gun-soo (Lee Sun-Kyun) of the Seoul Police Department is having a very difficult day: not only is he needed to attend the funeral of his mother, but his department is being raided by Internal Affairs and he has some material that needs to disappear before they find it. Leaving the funeral, he drives as fast as he can, but is distracted by having to swerve to avoid hitting a dog; turning his eyes back to the road, he's just in time to see the front of his car strike a human being instead. Worse, the man is dead, and Ko panics, deciding to hide the corpse in the trunk of his car while he deals with the other pressing matters of the moment. But then his plans go awry....The above is just the set-up of this very fast-paced, very adrenaline-filled film, and I'm not giving anything away that doesn't happen in the first few minutes. There are many twists and turns to the plot, and numerous moments where if you look away for just a minute, you'll miss something vital, so it's important to pay attention. And worth it, too, as the film will keep you on the edge of your seat with tension and sometimes almost falling off the edge of your seat with laughter (because, yes, there are some very funny moments too), and the surprises and twists keep coming literally to the very last frame of the film. The film won a lot of awards at various festivals and it's easy to see why - it's fast, it's smart and it's full of action. Highly recommended!