Die Bad

Sparky indie feature in four chapters, two previously shown as shorts in their own right. The chapters are deliberately varied in style (ciné-vérité, horror-noir, etc), but linked into a loose narrative. Seok-Hwan (Ryoo himself) provokes a pool hall fight between rival student gangs in which one guy dies. Seven years later he's become a cop and his kid brother is drifting into crime. Meanwhile the accidental murderer Sung-Bin (Park) is released from jail and universally ostracised. Haunted by the ghost of the boy he killed, he becomes a crimelord's enforcer and eventually revenges himself on Seok-Hwan by putting his brother in danger. By the end everyone is dead, dying or merely irredeemable. Basically an excuse for Ryoo and friends to show off their stunt action skills, it says all the obvious things about macho values and delinquency, but comes up fresh and watchable thanks to its play with form. A version trimmed by 3 to 4 minutes was a surprise hit in Korea.