Despite a relaxation of censorship standards since the late 1990s which helped Korean filmmakers such as Jang Sun-woo (Lies) and Park Jin-pyo (Too Young to Die) push the envelope in terms of onscreen sexual explicitness, Korean cinema had for years stayed away from quite a few "taboo" topics. Two among them were the negative experiences of military draftees (there is no such thing as sexual abuse among men in the Korean military, of course) and the widespread use of drugs (only Americans do drugs, of course). Now, however, two recent Korean films have tackled these very topics: The Unforgiven focusing on the military, and Bloody Tie exposing issues related to drugs.
The drug of choice for Korean addicts is Philophon (called hiroppong or ppong in street slang), basically a Japanese version of crystal meth or methampethamine solids. Meth was used by various governments (Japanese, Nazis, American) during the Second World War to boost production and keep troops alert: today it is recognized as one of the most widely used and socially destructive addictive substances in the world.
Bloody Tie begins with an actual news montage chronicling the explosive rise of meth use in the Busan area following the 1997 IMF crisis. The film then introduces two protagonists: Sang-do (Ryoo Seung-beom from Crying Fist), a cocky, street-savvy small-time dealer with a tragic family history involving his dopehead uncle (the veteran Kim Hee-ra), and Lieutenant Do (Hwang Jeong-min, You Are My Sunshine), a corrupt cop obsessed with bagging his arch-nemesis Jang Cheol, a big-shot crime lord ensconced in China. Sang-do and the Lieutenant hate each other with virulence, yet have built a complex symbiotic relationship over the years, not unlike a crocodile and an Egyptian plover.
Bloody Tie has a four-Chinese-character Korean title, "A Life-or-Death Decision," that alludes to Hong Kong urban action films of the 1980s. In substance, however, the film is shorn of H.K.-style romanticism and slow-mo visuals. Rather, it is fast, dirty and mean. At the center of this hardball film noir are two of the best actors working in Korean cinema today, Hwang Jeong-min and Ryoo Seung-beom. Hwang is brilliant as usual. His trademark steam-engine puffing ("Ssssheee...") is no longer oddly endearing here as it was in A Bittersweet Life, but revealed as a sound made by a viper spitting venom at its prey before swallowing it whole.
Unfortunately for me, the character played by Hwang remains a weak link in Bloody Tie. If Director Choi, as the publicity materials imply, intended to make this character reminiscent of the scary-as-hell sociopaths in Graveyard of Honor and other yakuza films of Fukasaku Kinji, I must say he did not quite pull it off. To put it another way, Lieutenant Do is an evil bastard from whom I could not detect any shred of "moral ambiguity" or "complexity of character."
But the movie really belongs to Ryoo Seung-beom's Sang-do. I am fast running out of superlatives to praise Ryoo, undoubtedly the most naturally talented Korean actor of his generation. Following his stunning turn in Crying Fist, Ryoo, without ever resorting to cute mannerisms or exaggerated theatrics, makes us root for Sang-do, a craven little thug full of hot air, who is smart enough to be one step ahead of his competitors, but not smart enough to see that he is nothing more than a rat in a pinwheel in terms of the Big Picture.
Bloody Tie is a dark, vicious and surprisingly poignant film noir, which maintains its integrity despite wholly unnecessary (and ultimately detrimental) capitulation on its maker's part to the lineage of '80s Hong Kong cinema. Do not expect something beautiful and slick: this baby's got a bite.