No Blood No Tears

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre action Starring Do-yeon Jeon, Hye-yeong Lee, Jae-yeong Jeong, Goo Shin, Doo-hong Jung Directed by Seung-wan Ryoo Publisher CJ Entertainment

It’s no secret that Pulp Fiction has influenced caper films since it was released back in 1994. Many films have imitated it – few have pulled it off successfully. I have no evidence to back up the assumption I have that the Korean film No Blood No Tears  is heavily influenced by Pulp Fiction other than the way it was filmed, but I think the evidence is pretty compelling.

What made Pulp Fiction successful is the fact that each little story is fleshed out beautifully. Despite the number of characters and the variety of stories, it’s easy to follow. The problem with No Blood is that it’s difficult to follow at times. The jumps between story lines occur way too rapidly (at least for my taste), and I found myself having to rewind just to make sure I was following everything correctly…but that may just be a side effect of the subtitles, which I’ve never had a problem with in the past.

The movie itself centers around Kyeong-seon (Hye-yeong Lee), a down-on-her-luck taxi driver with a child in another city, and Su-ji (Do-yeon Jeon), the pop-star-wannabe girlfriend of ill-tempered (and heavily abusive) ex-boxer Dok-bul (Jae-yeong Jeong), who is the manager of an underground dog fighting ring. Long story short, Kyeong-seon and Su-ji join up after they get in a car crash to steal money from Dok-bul and his boss. In any caper film, dialogue seems to be relatively important, and that’s a large problem with the film: not only is it difficult to follow when it’s being constantly cut up between scenes, but the vast majority of the speaking is shouting obscenities. There’s not much in the way of character development, and the only person you really end up feeling sorry for in any way is Su-ji, because she’s such a cute little girl that is constantly getting abused or beaten up by one person or another. But even then, you don’t feel TOO sorry for her because she could’ve gotten out of the situation one way or another a long time ago.

The best scenes in the movie are action scenes, which were surprisingly sparse. One would figure in an action movie (an Asian action movie, no less) that action would play the integral part in the movie, but it doesn’t. When it does, the movie picks it up a notch, but they’re over as soon as they had started. The most intriguing character is known simply as “Silent Man” (Doo-hong Jung), the right hand man of Dok-bul’s boss. He moves like a robot. He fights like a robot. He has the facial expression of a robot for the most part. And I think he is probably the best part of the entire movie. Whenever he gets involved, the movie starts to get really exciting. Too bad he is underused to a fault.