Loyal Sun-Woo has been faithfully working for his crime boss Kang for 7 years. While having dinner with Kang, Sun-Woo is asked to perform an important favor for his boss. Kang is leaving for a short 3 day trip to Shanghai and during that time he wants Sun-Woo to watch over his young mistress, Hee-Soo. Kang explains that he has suspicions that she may be seeing someone else. He also warns Hee-Soo, “Be Smart, Things are going good for you now.

But the world is not that easy. You can do 100 things right, but 1 mistake can destroy you.” If Sun-Woo notices any type of indiscretions on the mistress’ part, he wants to be notified immediately. At first Sun-Woo faithfully follows his boss’ orders and chaperons Hee-Soo as his loyal henchmen. Unfortunately Sun-Woo soon starts to develop feelings for Hee-Soo. Shortly afterwards, Sun-Woo discovers that Kang’s mistress is indeed seeing a younger man and Sun-Woo is torn between his loyalty to his boss and his affection for Hee-Soo. He must now decide whether to inform his boss about Hee-Soo’s affair or keep silent . The consequence of this decision will then set course for Sun-Woo to seek revenge for what he cannot have.

He gets to the back room and asks the gentlemen causing the disturbance to leave within the count of three. After the 3 seconds passes, Sun-Woo charges at the three thugs like an Olympic gymnast and does some distinctly Asian kicks and chops. With that stylish beginning “A Bittersweet Life” kicks into high gear and becomes an exhilarating 2 hour ride.

The movie was directed by Kim Jee-Woon (A Tale Of Two Sisters, The Foul King, A Quite Family) in an impressive action movie meets film noire style. There were scenes where you would recall the influences of Goodfellas, Carlito’s Way, Scarface, Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but the way they were incorporated into A Bittersweet Life was purely complementary and not plagiaristic. The cast of characters were, mostly, impressive and some notable performances were done by Lee Byung-Hun (haven’t seen him in a good movie since JSA) Jeong-min Hwang (You Are My Sunshine, A Good Lawyer’s Wife) and Mina Shin (Sad Movie, Madeleine).

There was a particularly riveting escape scene that brought to mind Oldboy, that was great in the “how the hell is he going to get out of this?” kind of way. If I had to nitpick at some things, the cinematography towards the second half became distracting with its overly excessive color hues. The actors that played the gun dealers were to cartoonish and seemed out of place in the film, but their scenes were brief. Besides that, absolutely enjoyed A Bittersweet Life for being a fast paced gangster movie meets film noire with a heart.