Kim Byung-doo is the eldest son of his family, with two more brothers and a sick mother, their responsibility to provide for their livelihoods and health pressure more and more. For some time involved in the local mafia, our protagonist even reached a certain success, being the head of a subgroup. But that's not financially enough, Kim lives a life as good as or worse than people his age, and the prospect of growing up in the mafia shrinks to the point that his "supervisor" is a chupim and fears to put him in a more relevant role.While this is taking place, his classmates make a reunion. There he reviews his high school passion and also an old friend, now a young filmmaker. This school reunion will draw two more points from the story, the relationship with Hyun-ju and the resumption of friendship with Min-ho.Throughout history, the Mafia president suffers with a small problem and scale Kim to solve it. The solution involves the murder of a prestigious prosecutor. The young gangster takes care of the service and immediately suffers an existential crisis. He begins to weigh his poor family, his old love that does not sympathize with being a thug and the very fact of killing an innocent person. Distraught, Kim goes to Hyun-ju's house, which readily offers a friendly shoulder.Hyun-ju managed to produce some things, but nothing relevant. He has been working on a screenplay for a long time, demonstrating the life of gangsters. Its versions are discarded in sequence, lack truth in the text, according to the producer. The friend's shoulder resolves to appropriate Kim's confidences and rewrite his final script in a new outfit.The death of the promoter and the final script brings problems for all involved directly and splashes in the others. Despite the existence of many films about the genre, Biyeolhan geori surprises by treating the subject in another way, with originality and script that interconnects all the subplots with harmony. As typical of Korean cinema, the photograph is beautiful and well marks the efficient direction of the film. Unlike his countrymen, the film does not gush blood or feelings, his biggest bet is on human relations and the limit to conquer what is desired.

No glamorous, highly classy gangster story. No sweetening of unrealistic heroic gangsters in this movie. This shows corrupt cop, a parasitic life of gangsters. Somehow, the story deeply moves your sympathy of a human tragedy.The main character is a 29 year old petty gangster who is burdened caring for an ailing mother, a brother who wants to become a gangster and his family is about to lose their home. He realizes that he cannot continue on like this. He finds himself in a web of murder and betrayal in a world where trust and mercy doesn't exist.compared other Korean gangster movies, this is one of the top 5.

If you are looking for more in a gangster film than just violence and fights then this is the film for you.This is a very well rounded film, in addition to some good scenes of violence, murder, betrayal and fights, there is a good splaterring of humour, family drama and a small bit of romance too.The film centres around a low level gangster who through hard work and various violent acts begins to rise through the ranks.One of the major messages of the film is about trust, friendship and betrayal.The acting and directing are all very good, without the need to go over the top due to the excellent pacing of the film and a very good storyline.Very highly recommended, the time to the end credits is just shy of 2H18, but it's well worth the time for the excellent twists and turns as the film goes on.

Since I have not heard about this film before it was broadcast on the Sundance Channel, I had no expectations. This is a very good to almost excellent film about gangster life in South Korea. It features In-sung Zo in a terrific performance as low level gangster Byong-doo. He meets up with an old friend Min-ho, who is a filmmaker and picks Byong-doo's brains about being a gangster. It spirals from there, as Byong-doo gets more ruthless and violent in his quest for more money and especially power. He also meets up with another old classmate. the pretty Hyun-joo (Bo-yong Lee) and that relationship develops slowly. There is some violence in this, but if you like gangster films I liked this as much as Goodfellas. Really, it is that absorbing and highly recommended.