The ceremony continues for anyone ardently following the work of director Ryoo Seung-wan. The hitmaker’s career of more than two-decades is now readying one of Ryoo’s biggest throwbacks for the 25th edition of the Jeonju International Film Festival, with Ryoo’s 2000 feature debut, Die Bad.
Sung-bin accidentally commits manslaughter while breaking up his friend Suk-hwan’s rumble. After serving his sentence, Sung-bin reaches out to Suk-hwan but now a police investigator, Suk-hwan avoids Sung-bin. One day, Sung-bin saves a mobster by chance, and follows him into the world of violence. Suk-hwan’s brother Sang-hwan secretly enters the gang finds a place under Sung-bin’s wing, making their relationships even more twisted.
As Ryoo’s fans know, the four-part Die Bad was key to solidifying Ryoo in the action genre for years to come. Boxing drama Crying Fist, modern day martial arts fantasy romp Arahan, and gangbuster delight City Of Violence have all earned their place in film fandom history with Ryoo going for even bigger scale titles for broader audiences, including Battleship Island, Escape From Mogadishu, and his latest 70s high seas crime romp, Smugglers.
Ryoo’s next presence will be in Cannes for the Midnight Screening entry of I, The Executioner, his sequel to the 2015 cop actioner, Veteran, starring Hwang Jung-min. In the meantime, it’ll be on Jeonju to wow the crowd with a revival of Ryoo’s 2000 coming out party, and with a 4K restoration to suit fans of beat ’em up noir thrillers alike.
I can only hope this means a stateside physical release of Die Bad on Blu-Ray and UHD in the near future. Ryoo’s films definitely need – and deserve – the attention they’ve more than earned at this point.
