I'm Kneeling at Your Altar, Mighty Jeon Do-yeon, watching your Art makes me dizzy of admiration.
A King Actress dominating and igniting the screen with her sheer presence. Yes, i sound like a pathetic Fan Boy
i know, but i LOVE her, i love Jeon Do-yeon for her talent, for her ability to touch your soul with her genius film
performances. In this gripping and dark - Film Noir dark - crime-drama she presents an unforgettable woman,
the aging and worn by life 2nd rate Bar hostess and gangster girlfriend Hye-kyung.

Disillusioned, tired and a bit sad she's unforgettable and the performance of Hye-kyung even equals the Film Noir
Gangster Girlfriend Epic portrayal of Gloria Grahame in Fritz Lang's 1953 classic The Big Heat. She has won a
Best Actress award for the role at some Film Festival and the film was shown in Cannes 2015, Un Certain Regard.
Kim Nam-gil supports her nicely with his portrait of a calculating smart police detective falling for the wrong woman

The Second sleeve of the Korean DVD

The Story:

The gangster enforcer Park Jun-gil (Park Sung-woong) has committed a murder and hides somewhere in Seoul.
Police detective Jung Jae-gon (Kim Nam-gil) leads the hunt for the murder and stakes out the perps girlfriend,
the middle-aged bar hostess Kim Hye-kyung (Jeon Do-yeon) in the hope of Jun-gil showing up at her door.
Loose cannon Jun-gil has fallen in disgrace with Jay Investment, the Mob, who orders the corrupt police to
finish him when they find him. And, detective Jung is also a bought cop.

He goes undercover and starts working as some sort of manager or bouncer at her bar, Macau, and his cop
colleague warns him not to fall for her. She was once the girlfriend of the big mob boss and working as a high
class prostitute/bar hostess at the most elegant bars (run by the Organisation i guess?) but now she's working at
a cheap bar and she's the mistress to a brutal underling, and he's only interested in her money and strips her of
all her earnings, to gamble. Hye-kyung, she's in debt to her boss, Jay Investment and has to continue "working"
at the girlie bar even though she's tired and worn and wants to quit.

But she has still got some alluring sexual aura around her, and detective Jung falls for her. She doesn't know that
the new strange guy at her bar really is a cop who wants to get her "man", and finally she falls also for him.
Jung, or Mr. Lee YJ as his alias is at the bar, promises he will fix her debt and wants her to live with him, that she
will live a new life with him. Light at the end of the tunnel, or ? No, no, noo ...

prepare for a mighty Feel Bad ending. Impressive, and i'm a real sucker for those Film Noir bad endings, YUM.

Beware! For those expecting a snappy crime drama. This film really is NOT a crime-mystery or thriller about
the murder committed in the intro of the film. It's a SLOW crime-drama about the growing relation between
Jung and Hye-kyung, or the relations between Jung, Hye-kyung and Jun-gil, a triangle drama maybe.
But, mostly it's about the HYPNOTIC and enigmatic Kim Hye-kyung watched through the eyes of the cop.

The Film is not a masterpiece but very much recommended for lovers of South Korean Noir and the fabulous
actress Jeon Do-yeon. This is the only second film that Director Oh Seung-uk has directed, and the first was
the indie crime movie Kilimanjaro in 2001 ... 15 years ago that is! I remember i saw that one then and that i
liked it, but i can't remember anything more. Oh has also written the script to this film.

Anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1, 5.1 korean audio with english subtitles, 168 min, 8 postcards enclosed in the
sleeve and the extra material without english subs as usual with Korean editions.
16 minutes behind the scenes, 11 minutes deleted scenes with comments from crew (incl. the whole scene with
detective Jung's ex-wife), black & white art video, promo footage, 2 featurettes, Cannes trailer, non arty trailer