"No Blood No Tears" was a movie that I was really looking forward to watching. Why? Well because it was a Third Windows Film, and they usually have really good (and often quite remarkable) Asian movies out on the market. Plus "No Blood No Tears" also had Do-yeon Jeon on the cast list (and she was amazing in "The Harmonium in my Memory").Now having seen this movie, I must admit that I feel somewhat disillusioned, because this movie was nowhere as interesting or exciting as I had hoped. It was like director, Seung-wan Ryoo, wanted to accomplish a lot of things all at once, but didn't fully manage to juggle all the balls he had put up in the air. The movie was trying to tell too many tales at the same time, and it ended up being a rather confusing, stupid and irritating mess of a story. Sure, "No Blood No Tears" had its moments, but in general there was just not enough of a red thread throughout the story to hang on to.The acting in the movie was actually quite good, and I think that goes for everyone in the movie, because the actors and actresses portrayed their characters quite well and came off as believable characters on the screen.It was a shame that there was too much going on in the movie at the same time and that the movie was jumping back and forth trying to tie together all the various story lines and characters. It just didn't work out as the director had intended. And that is the reason why I give the movie only a mediocre grade. "No Blood No Tears" could have been a much better movie, had the director not trying to throw so many different elements into one project. Would have been better to focus on a couple of the story lines and tie them together in a more constructed way.But still, Do-yeon Jeon (playing Su-ji) and Hye-yeong Lee (playing Kyeong-seon) - the two main characters - actually made the movie worth enough to sit through till the end.

This film does actually have a slice of pretty much all action staples. The problem is that none of them are done well at all. There's no originality or freshness or even energy to many of the things that happen in this film. The car chase for instance has un-fancy, domestic cars (No problem with that) driving at a furious 50 MPH or so (There's our first problem) on a deserted, spacious dock (another problem, where's the sense of danger?), where they drive through barrels of water (Oh, thrilling!).Get this, our main protagonists are...women! No one's ever done that before, or at least this film seems to think so as it provides us no other reason for the audience to care about them. The model's boyfriend hit her (awww) and the taxi driver's sick of her job (awww), but together, for no real reason they're gonna steal some money and live life to the fullest. Hell yeah.NBNT even features your favourite been there, done that talking points of recent years: Briefcase you never see inside of, Car crash out of nowhere~! Dog fighting (bound to be controversial and get your movie some attention), A man who says nothing but kicks ass, A gang of goofy friends with big dreams who directly reference other movies, Flashy editing.This might sounds like it all adds up to a good film, but every aspect is executed horribly to the point where it's hard to care about anything. This could even be forgivable if there was even one likable line or scene or stunt or fight or shot in the entire 114 minutes, but there isn't. At all. The world would be a better place if half-hearted efforts like this never saw a release.

For a couple of years now, I'd worn down my region 3 DVD copy of "No Blood No Tears" and nearly despaired when the thin plastic at the center of the DVD cracked, making it hard to play. Thankfully a Region 1 DVD edition is now available, and we can all enjoy director Ryu Seong Won's fun, Tarantino-esquire crime caper/action comedy. In a nutshell, "No Blood No Tears" is about two down-and-out women, who spy a chance to make some quick money, enough to change their dead-end lives, inadvertently setting off a six-sided gang war over the missing funds. The film is also noteworthy for the first on-screen appearance of South Korea's most accomplished action director/martial arts choreographer Jeon Du Hong ("Fighter in the Wind, Arahan") as "The Silent Man", a mob enforcer. Stylishly shot in browns, reds and inky blacks, "No Blood No Tears" only drawbacks are two chase scenes, one on foot, the other a car chase, that are a bit unconvincing. Otherwise, "No Blood No Tears" is really fun stuff. It's definitely worth a try, if nothing else for the impromptu "cage match" between Jeon's "silent man" and Jeong's "Bulldog" a washed up ex-boxer, one of the best fight scenes I've seen in some time.

It's an action movie with a brain... there are some amazing fight scenes in it, most of which are really unusual, but all of which are filmed beautifully. When I saw this film at KIMA in Berkeley, the director (Seung-wan Ryoo (Die Bad)) was on hand to comment on the film afterward (he's all of 29 years old, and he was wearing an Adidas track suit to the festival); he cited his influences as the Hong Kong movies that he watched growing up in the 80's, as well as Bruce Lee films, and the influences are evident in the fight scenes. It's a remarkably smart movie, too, with a collection of not-at-all stock characters. The main character is a female ex-con who's trying to go straight by driving a taxi. She's having a tough time of it, though, because she keeps beating the hell out of guys who try to solicit her for sex, and there are a couple of geriatric thugs who keep chasing her for some money owed by her ex-husband. The plot goes from there, and provides a colorful and unique vision of a criminal underworld.