Vituperative, iniquitous and outright disturbed, petty gangster Soon-Hong exists in a distempered loop of demoralising confrontations. Whether employed to ‘quell’ a student demonstration, or simply humiliating an ingénue thug for following in his cantankerous footsteps, nothing appears to slake his thirst for confrontation. Schoolgirl Han Yeon-heui makes the mistake of simply walking past him, resulting in a face full of spit and an astonishing barrage of profanity. It soon emerges, however, that she suffers from the same thing responsible for driving Soon-Hong’s self-loathing – namely domestic violence. Through their empathy, Soon-Hong takes stock of his mode of living, and his estranged relationships with his son and father alike. But the eddy of violence flows rather than ebbs, and he finds his lifestyle one he cannot leave behind. Actor-writer-producer Yang Ik-june’s unsentimental debut contains a power all of its own, sporting a verité feel owing to the film’s crew starring in key roles – the director casting with a Bressonian eye for looks rather than acting experience. Once this is matched to the language spoken – a mixture of country slang and rural dialect – you have not so much a violent film, but a film about violence and how it is woven within the very threads of South Korea’s lower economic milieu. Maybe most violent is the suggestion that Confucian fidelity to the family order is not the answer, but the problem; that Han Yeon-heui’s distaff demands she has to look after her family while still at school is just as brutal than her brother’s flailing, existential aggressions. Coming at a time when the South Korean wave appears to have peaked, Breathless stands all the more subversive in its wilful opposition to glamour and escapism. Stripping away the faux existentialism that encumbers most gangster films, this is closer to Nicolas Winding Refn than Kim Jee-woon. Thankfully questioning South Korea’s often ambivalent imagery of Confucian masculinity – especially its violent potency – the film’s true strength is in achieving catharsis through deglamourisation. One wonders exactly where the Korean gangster film can go next; Breathless dismantles every single tenet and facet that gangster chic is predicated upon – both in front of and behind the camera.