Mikes Film Talk

Very few filmmakers can do bloody redemption quite like South Korean cinema. The 2014 feature No Tears for the Dead is the perfect example of an almost soap opera style thriller/drama. Where a hitman tries to make amends for an accidental killing at the very start of the film. *Although the Pang Bros do a cracking job, just check out Bangkok Dangerous.*

Written and directed by Jeong-beom Lee, it is his third film. It stars The Warrior’s Way Gong-Don Jang, Min-Hee Kim (Hellcats, Helpless) and Brian Tee (Jurassic World, The Wolverine) No Tears for the Dead follows the journey of Gon, an American trained Korean hitman who works for a Triad organization.

The Set Up

At the start of the film, a group of gangsters are in the back room of a casino, or club. A little Korean girl sits on her own with an origami stork on the table in front of her. She listens to a singer. A man forces his way into the back room. He begins killing everyone with a silenced pistol. As he finishes, there is a noise at the room’s exit. The man fires blindly through the closed door. He opens it. The origami bird is on the floor. The little girl is dead, shot through the chest.

The Triad boss he works for tells the hitman, Gon, to kill the child’s mother. First they retrieve a file her deceased husband sent her via email. Gon, (Gong-Don Jang) is overcome with guilt and remorse at his murder of an innocent. The gang have to break into his house to find him. They discover he has drunk himself into a stupor and Gon has passed out covered in vomit.

The Reprisal

Gon is sent to Korea. Someplace he never returned. Not since he and his mother left years ago. The hitman’s mother tried to desert him in America and later kills herself. Gon goes to the country of his birth. He attempts to recover the file. The hitman breaks into Mo-Kyoeng’s (played by Min-Hee Kim) house. Inside he is surrounded by the essence of little Yumi. The girl he killed earlier. The child’s growth chart, art work from her school and, because Gon has cloned the mother’s cell phone, he sees pictures and videos of the dead girl.

The Korean mob boss, who works for the Triads, learns that Mo-Kyeong has accessed the file. He orders Gon to kill the grieving mother. Gon enters her house and finds the woman unconscious on her couch. having taken several bottles of pills. He fires his gun at the arm of the settee, over her head, and calls 911.

While Mo-Kyeong is in the hospital, a group of assassins, former colleagues of Gon, are hired to kill them both. His old friend and mentor Chaoz (Lee) heads up the deadly gang and it becomes a battle of wits, bullets, blood and betrayal as Gon tries to make up for murdering the woman’s daughter by saving her life. My-Yeong must also fight and she almost loses to the killers more than once.

Thoughts

This is a sort of “pot boiler” drama about a hitman. The film is not too dissimilar from the 1998 Chinese film The Replacement Killers with Yun-Fat Chow and Mira Sorvino. It is also like the Pang Bros 2000 film Bangkok Dangerous.

*On a side note, the latter film was remade with Nicolas Cage in 2008. Avoid this shabby and abysmal film at all costs.*

The Verdict

There are long shootouts with a variety of weapons. Some brilliantly choreographed fights between Gon and the bad guys and a fair few good twists and turns to the plot. Add in some great little ironic events and a few touching moments of backstory and No Tears for the Dead becomes a 5 out of 5 star film.

Partially subtitled; with the Chinese gangsters and Gon conversing in English throughout the film, this South Korean film cracks on at a rapid pace and makes the run time of just under two hours feel much shorter. As this is just Jeong-beom Lee’s third film keep an eye on this filmmaker and expect to see much more of his work.

No Tears for the Dead is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Do not miss this one.

The Trailer