Film Review – Breathless.
Having lost the link to student blogs to the big monster that was my laptop being wiped, I’ve yet to see if anybody else reviewed this film, but I’m quite sure at least a few will start with ‘Breathless actually left me breathless.’ If not, it’s a wasted pun, and I’m going to use it. Breathless actually left me breathless. There.
There’s something quite fun about entering a room to watch a film and being warned about gore, swearing and shocking images. It appeals to the child in me, and probably will do to any other viewer who likes an action packed film. Made in 2008 in South Korea, Breathless follows the basic storyline as many East Asian films tended to do, by focusing on a person and his dark journey through life. This time around, Sang Hun (Yank Ik June) is taken through a seedy life of violence, demolition and malice as we follow his life as a debt collector. Huns job is to threaten and injure people who owe his boss money, and due to his childhood, he has a dark view on life.
His mother and sister were killed when he was young, and he blames his father for this, and for this reason Hun grew up as a destructive and violent man who solved any problem through anger and hatred. This is typical of many films of its genre, though with emotional acting and a chilling reality to the situation, Breathless initiates a brilliant start to the plot and sets the story up nicely. The twist that follows is unexpected, as Hun spits on a girl who tells him to wipe it off. Shockingly, he knocks her out with one punch, but even more shockingly for his character, he waits for her to recover and gets her a drink. Films still give a shock to see a woman injured, much more a punch to the face, and this is no exception to that rule.
Yeon Hee, the face that connected with the fist, is a high school student who becomes friends with Sang Hun, and the plot disolves into a confusing ride about family problems, character history and a feeling of closeness and similarity between the two people. It’s easily possible to lose sight of what’s going on at this point, but the basics are that Yeon Hee is being beaten by her father, and with Huns obvious hatred for fathers, he becomes close to her and tries to protect her. While the two are key characters in the film, romance and mushy love never really comes into play, which is a welcome relief due to how amazingly dark and seedy the film began and for it to end so soon would be a shame.
Sadly, the rest of the film becomes a lengthy drawn out blood and guts fight scene, followed by a closing which seemed to just inexplicably happen really quickly. With too much blood and far too much swearing, the rest of the films values seem lost on the audience and instead we are treated to a tonne of fighting. On the whole, the fighting is good, but the scenes needed to be interspersed with actual plot and some sort of emotion, and this is where Breathless falls down quite hard. The ending seems entirely rushed and pointless, and it bores and dissapoints as the end of an otherwise great idea for a film.
So breathless does leave you breathless. At the start, because it’s genuinely shocking, and at the end, because you’ve probably died of boredom.
