Hard Romanticker 2011

Overview

Writer-director Gu Su-yeon's new film draws on his own semiautobiographical account of growing up as a delinquent zainichi Korean (Japanese-born, but of Korean ancestry) in the seaside city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, a working-class hellhole overflowing with sex and fury. Day after day, (fictional) Gu finds fresh foes and makes the local hoodlums want to kick his ass. While working multiple dead-end part-time jobs, he cruises around town on his scooter in search of gangland trouble: