The City Of Violence DVD Review

Korea’s particular burst in cinema this last decade makes it an interesting country for examination right now, especially concerning the subject of revenge. Many Korean films in the recent past have dealt with revenge, most notably Park Chanwook’s Oldboy, the second in his vengeance trilogy. Until the 1980s Korean cinema was highly oppressed for many years, but from 1988 to 1995 the censorship laws were slowly revoked, allowing for a completely fresh generation of filmmakers to create Korean cinema from the ground up. These films have proved to be highly violent and often dealing with vengeance and revenge as a common theme and although much of this is associated with Korean filmmakers suddenly being freed from censorship, able finally to make more violent film, in fact violence, revenge and torture have long been engrained in Korean stories. The City of Violence continues this tradition along with some new tricks to keep it cutting edge.

Part detective story and part buddy action, The City of Violence begins with a single act of violence which spawns the film’s events. Detective Taesoo (played by director, Ryoo Seung-Wan) doesn’t appear to be a very motivated or hardworking hero when we join him sleeping at a desk along with three shirtless thugs. His demeanor is calm and collected, even stoic as he receives a phone call from back home telling him that his friend Wangjae has died. He returns home to find that his friend’s death was no accident and decides to stay and try and figure out what really happened. Eventually he joins forces with another high school friend, Sukhwan, who has been investigating on his own. What is interesting is watching the two friends work together each piece of the puzzle on his own until they join forces to find the person responsible and get revenge. City of Violence continues this theme in Korean cinema along with many other expected areas of focus.

For instance, Korean cinema also tends to place a great deal of focus on the time period of being young and in school, both as a bonding period and as a period and setting where horrific events can happen. This is primarily because of the intense amount of time a child spends in the Korean school system by the end of high school. In The City of Violence the high school segments come as they do in many films; through flashbacks, but director Ryoo Seung-Wan adds in his own postmodern style to the traditional storyline. Before the first flashback a split screen is showing us the person on the other end of a phone conversation but it suddenly switches another shot which is taking place a few moments in the future. This jarring bit of editing plays with the audience’s concept of time immediately before throwing them into a flashback, a whirlwind of changes that is quite interestingly disorientating.

As much attention is given to the smaller details in the film, the focus is bound to be on the action, which is a perfect balance of realism and entertainment. The streets in the film are overrun by gangs which seem to echo The Warriors and when all of these gangs corner our hero in the street the result is the perfect answer to the horribly digitalized fight scene in The Matrix Reloaded in which Neo fights hundreds of men. (One could answer that this was already done with the climactic battle of Kill Bill Volume One, and there certainly seem to be some valid points to that argument and I wouldn’t doubt that Tarantino would love this film and nearly all of today’s Korean cinema.) This scene takes all of the elements which worked in all of this films, and maybe a little of Oldboy’s hallway battle, and makes them work in a natural and unique way. Instead of ripping off other action films or attempting something so original that it doesn’t even seem to echo in reality, Seung-Wan has simply improved upon many previous concepts and made them work to his advantage. And this is within the first thirty minutes of the film and only the second large fight with plenty left to come.

Even as the fighting takes on a life of its own, there are many moments within the film which seem to be inserting a pastiche from several American films with cult status. It seems a perfect counter-response to Tarantino’s Kill Bill which takes much from Samurai films. These brief references are done with the respect of the new wave of postmodern filmmakers Tarantino seems to helm so appropriately, especially after the Grindhouse experience.

This is the kind of film that you are glad is already released on a two-disc ultimate edition when released for the first time on DVD in region 1 format. There are a ton of the dependable special features that usually come included in Dragon Dynasty releases. The first disc has a commentary by director, and star, Ryoo Seung-Wan, as well as a blooper reel and trailer gallery. The second disc really digs in with an incredible behind-the-scenes examination of the high intensity fight sequences. There is also an expected making-of featurette and five more behind-the-scenes featurettes on various production elements. It doesn’t stop there, with deleted scenes, interviews and more.