Korean Movie A Hard Day Movie Review (2014)

action, crime, korean movie, movie review, thriller,

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Lee Sun Gyun stars as a dirty cop who has a hard day. The film starts off where the lead character driving along at night. He gets a phone call from his sister, she wants him to get to the funeral of his mother quickly. He’s also going through a divorce and on the way to the funeral he hits a man and kills him, then he puts the man into the trunk of his car and tries to cover up the hit and run.
The first half hour of this film are very suspenseful and starts off really strong because the entire time is just goes from the get-go. It’s just boom, hits you straight away and then just keep getting more tension until it completely build but then by about the halfway mark it’s kind of deflate a little.
As I watching this movie, I was thinking it reminded me a lot like a completely different genre film, Gravity (2013). With Gravity it didn't like hit straight away, there was a little bit of character development but then shit just kept happening to them and they were like, “Oh my god, how are we going to get out of this?” This film kind of starts that way.

Another action and thriller movie you might like : The Equalizer (2014), John Wick (2014)

The problem is, it’s get a little predictable and it ends with one of those endings where it just keep going. There isn’t really an end. When you get to the logical conclusion of this film, it decides, “No, we’re not going to stop here. We’re going to bring in another 20 minutes or so.” If it had stopped where it did stop, then it would have been  a very high recommendation.
The thing I love the most about this movie is the cinematography. There were a lot of shots particularly the aerial shots in the chase scene, where it’s kind of like looking down. Those were really cool shots.
Lee Sun Gyun performance is very good in this movie. The suspense all comes from him and what I like about his character is he’s flawed. He’s not this perfect guy who just happens to have shitty day. He is actually not a very good person himself because the way he acts at the funeral, what he does to his mother’s coffin, when he’s trying to dispose the body, and also he takes bribes, he’s a dirty cop. Another bad thing that happens to him on that day is he and his fellow police officer being investigated by internal affairs unit.
In the first thirty to forty minutes, it’s very Hitchcockian. If Hitchcock were live today, he would be really happy watching the first half of the film. It’s very suspenseful. It’s not award-worthy for the technical side but it’s good on story-wise.

Director: Seong-hoon Kim
Writers: Seong-Hun Kim, Seong-hoon Kim
Stars: Lee Sun Gyun, Cho Jin-Woong, Man-shik Jeong
Duration: 111 min