A Bittersweet Life

2005 119 min ★ 7.4 Action, Drama, Crime

Kim Sun-woo is an enforcer and manager for a hotel owned by a cold, calculative crime boss, Kang who assigns Sun-woo to a simple errand while he is away on a business trip; to shadow his young mistress, Hee-soo, for fear that she may be cheating on him with a younger man with the mandate that he must kill them both if he discovers their affair.

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Cast

Lee Byung-hun

Sun-woo

Kim Yeong-cheol

Mr. Kang

Shin Min-a

Hee-soo

Kim Roi-ha

Moon-seok

Lee Ki-young

Oh Moo-seong

Hwang Jung-min

Mr. Baek

Eric Mun

Tae-goo

Oh Dal-su

Myeong-goo

Kim Hae-gon

Tae-woong

Kim Han

Se-yoon

Details

Director

Kim Jee-woon

Screenplay

Kim Jee-woon

Tagline

"When doing right goes very, very wrong."

Status

Released

Original Language

KO

Revenue

$7,600,000

Production

Bom Film Productions, CJ Entertainment

Reviews

B

badelf

October 14, 2025

★ 10/10

A Bittersweet Life: When Mind and Heart Move Kim Jee-woon's "A Bittersweet Life" is less a crime drama and more a philosophical treatise dressed in the razor-sharp suit of a gangster film. From its opening invocation—"It is not the wind and trees that move, it is your mind and heart that move"—the film announces itself as something far more profound than a simple revenge narrative. The cinem...