A Hard Day

A thriller set in Korea. Ko Gun-su is a homicide detective. His mother has died and he is driving to the funeral. An internal investigation started the same day. His unit is accused of taking bribes and the inspectors are at the station. He is in the car, on the phone, drunk. He hits someone on the road. The man dies. There is nobody around. No camera. From there the film is a story of covering up. Gun-su puts the body in the boot. He does not know where to put it. Then he has an idea: his mother's coffin. In the middle of the funeral, with nobody there, he opens the coffin and puts the body inside. The narrative builds this section as pure tension and it is funny at the same time. The funeral ends. The coffin is buried. Then a telephone call comes. A voice speaks: he says he was there that night and saw everything. From there the film becomes blackmail. The caller wants no money and reports nothing. He wants the body back. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but a chain: its idea is that every solution creates a new problem and that the man sinks deeper at every step. The man on the other side is police too. He is far stronger and far dirtier. The action is hard. A lift, a construction site and a vehicle. The tone is mixed. The narrative moves constantly between thriller and black comedy. The structure is very tight. It leaves no slack and every scene sets up the next. The last section takes place in a building and is wholly excessive. Kim Seong-hun wrote and directed. Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Jin-woong and Jeong Man-sik are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Korean thrillers and a mixture with black comedy. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the plot leans on coincidence and the last half hour abandons logic on purpose.