THE CITY OF VIOLENCE (Korea, 2006)
Directed by: Ryu Seung-Wan
Starring: Jeong Du-Hong, Ryu Seung-Wan, Lee Beom-Su
“Ryu Seung-wan's new film is a brutally efficient martial arts thriller whose pleasures lie not only in the high-kicking legwork of its fight scenes, but also in its intermittent glimmers of visual ingenuity and stylish flourish." – Jamie Russell, Sight & Sound

Packed with sneak attack break dancers, BMX bandits, gibbering junkies and whipped into a frenzy by a hardcore funk-a-licious soundtrack, CITY OF VIOLENCE is so thoroughly 80’s that you’d expect to find it on a grindhouse double bill with Death Wish 2, not in a fancy pants film festival. But this stripped-down, old school action flick is the latest movie from Korea’s master of onscreen mayhem, Ryu Seung-Wan (Arahan, Crying Fist) who teams up with Korea’s master stuntman and action choreographer, Jeong Du-Hong (Tae Guk Ki, Shiri, The Foul King) to punch out the lights with this two-fisted pulp rocket.

Starting with a stabbing and ending with an obscenity, CITY OF VIOLENCE is as fast and furious as a dime novel, and its dark heart is the bloody corpse of Wang-Jae, bleeding out in an alley in the hick town of Onsung. His funeral brings best buddy, Tae-Soo (Jeong Du-Hong, a Tae Kwon Do tornado who’s all sleek cheekbones and slick black leather), back to his hometown where he discovers that the old gang has gone to hell. Casinos are coming to Onsung and big city gangsters are slicing the burb up like a big, bloody pork pie, and the hand holding the knife is old pal Pil-Ho (comedian Lee Beom-Su) a pint-sized Napoleon in an ice cream suit who looks like a psychotic Tom Wolfe. Tae-Soo runs into another buddy, the disreputable pervert Sukhwhan (Ryu Seung-Wan, sporting a red leather Michael Jackson jacket) and the two of them team up to take out the trash. This is the closest you’ll see to a modern day blaxploitation – make that a Koreasploitation – movie, and it’s so hardcore and so mondo pulpo that you’ll come out of the theater with celluloid stuck between your teeth.