Damnit, I just wrote a massive massive gushingly brilliant review of this film...alas is was too big for the box and the 'copy and pasting' option doesn't appear to be working....!


One word - WOW. Thank you Yang Ik June, thank you EIFF, this is a truly classic piece of cinema history, a complete *MUST SEE AT ALL COSTS*!!!

If "Gomorrah" stripped away all the conventions of the gangster movie and exposed us to the mundane and brutal realities of the life of a mafiosa and those who fall in their path then Ik-june has managed to leave us only with bone and sinew here in "Breathless".

Sang-Hoon is a debt-collector with a violent and disturbing past who vents his, seemingly never ending, rage on everyone he meets; associates, debtors, his nephew, his estranged father and strangers are all victim of his anger in a stream of foul language and bloody acts of violence.

When he spits, accidentally, on schoolgirl Yeon-Heui in the early minutes of the film she confronts him only to find herself punched with such force that she is left bruised and unconscious. Sadly there are still people who felt that this was something to laugh at...clearly mistaking the vile, ultra-real act for the "playful" and "humorous" misogyny of Judd Appatow. Out of this chance encounter however blossoms the most unlikely of friendships as Sang-Hoon and is delivered, almost, from his demons by Yeon Heui.

Ultimately this is not a gangster film, it is a film with gangsters in it but it is about family and, in particular, the role of men within the family. Nearly every man in the film is violent, lazy, flawed and incapable of being what those closest to them need them to be; supportive, caring and loving. When Sang-Hoon stumbles across one of his debtors beating his wife he launches into a brutal attack and asks why it is that in the outside world men like him are nothing but at home they behave like Kim Jong Il it is clear that Ik-june is presenting us with what he sees as the major flaw in our modern world.

A genuine classic that should join everyones "favourites" list. Disturbing, compelling, violent and moving all at once.