Films

**No Blood No Tears **
kyong-Son is a tough as nails ex-female gangster, who is down on her luck and now working as a taxi cab driver. To make matters worse, her husband left her years ago and now she is constantly harrassed by the mafia to payback his debts that he left behind. Kyong-Son soons meets Soo-Jin in a fateful car accident. Soo-Jin has aspirations to become a pop singer in Japan, but is burdened with a sadistic boxer/thug/boyfriend that beats her at willl. She comes up with an idea on how to get herself and Kyong-Son out of their miserable situations but it requires Kyong-Son's help and trust. Their motives are not always clear and they both seem to have something to hide, but they decide to go for the big score together. Fast paced noirish movie, that will bring to mind such film like Snatch and Pulp Ficton. The characters in the movie were many and all interesting; a washed-up middle-aged female cab driver, a sexy wannabe pop singer, an abusive boxer, a human martial arts fighting machine that never speaks a word, incompetent debt collectors, very bizarre gangsters and a bunch of unlucky cops and moronic informants. Viewer should be prepared for some heavy violence at times in the movie (street fights, martial art battles, and some gruesome dog-fighting scenes as well). No Blood No Tears plays out in the familiar gangster genre, but the movie is so engaging because of the cast of crazy characters, unpredicatble plot, the fact that most of the characters are not good or evil but drift somewhere in between, and Hye-yeong Lee who was absolutely brilliant playing her part as the washed up cab driver. Highly recommended if you crave a fun, fast paced, unpredictable, gangster movie.

Completely forgot about this truly excellent Korean film. Though its from 2002, it hasn't aged at all. A friend came over to my place and pulled it out of my DVD collection to watch. I'd forgotten how extremely good it was! Thoroughly recommended.