A Hard Day 끝까지 간다

Kim Sung-Hoon has directed this tight little action thriller and from whoa to go its a demonstration of mastery in the language of genre. This is so action packed and so gung ho and yet so slick and so seamless. It's strap me in sort of action too, a bit of a boys own fest but gee it's done so well.
Yet beneath all the high rolling stunts, the humour, the violence and the sleek production values is a pretty grisly message and the themes are quite telling. This is a world of cover ups and cover ups of the cover ups and layer on layer of cover up. And the things they are doing aren't so crash hot, so the fact that they try to cover them up says lots of them. Its endemic and is not addressed in any way other than it is there at the start, it is there throughout and it remains at the end.
This is the Police Force.

Lee Sun-Kyun as the detective who begins the chain of cover ups with an unfortunate car crash.
I love the fact that you empathise with him over his hard day even though his behavior is more akin to that of a gangsters'. The stakes rise exponentially and of course so does the tension but by the end we are so on his side, quite happy to forget his misdemeanors.
This angel is no angel really!

Lee Sun-Kyun dismayed over the moral bankruptcy of the law enforcement agencies. Not!

all action and thriller but of course there are those moments of comedic relief

I'm not going to say much but this one is a cracker and a great case study in genre mechanics.